


Second Go Around

by DoctorAgon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Demonic Possession, Family, Gen, Multi, Other bad things that might give away the plot so please ask me if you have concerns, Suicidal Ideation, Time Travel, Violence, eventually good things will happen but they haven't happened yet, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2018-12-07 15:59:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 47,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11626941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorAgon/pseuds/DoctorAgon
Summary: Dudley's been sent back in time. Which is fine, really. As long as he can get past the nightmares and the memories and the face he has to see staring back at him from the mirror, it's all fine.





	1. Chapter 1

Dudley leaned back away from Jared as he sprayed his swallow of beer out across the table, choking on his laugh as Ben pulled out the punchline of his raunchy joke. It was more disgusting than funny, Dudley thought.

He glanced around the pub, looking for something that might distract him from the assholes he was stuck with for the night. He smiled at a girl he caught looking his way, but she turned her nose up at him and he sighed. 

He knew what most of the kids from Uni thought of him. He was dull and stupid, and played rough sports like rugby and generally didn’t achieve much of anything outside of a field or a wrestling match or to be honest, even in it. He didn’t end up quite as tall as his childhood growth had suggested, and once he’d finally dropped the majority of the extra weight he’d carried for most of his life, he didn’t really have enough mass to stop larger opponents in their tracks anymore. He’d never be fast, either.

He wasn’t a very stand-out personality. Since the “event” with Harry when he was fifteen, he’d stopped being loud and stopped trying to bully others, and he knew most others found him rather dull. By trying not to domineer every interaction he was involved in, he ended up dumbly nodding along to whatever the other person said.

“You never have any opinions,” a girlfriend once told him. “If I wanted someone to just wait up for me and follow me around and never disagree with me, I’d buy myself a dog.”

He stared morosely down into his beer. That was the problem, there. Harry had been the only one to ever really try to disagree with him back when he was a general arse to everyone, and even then all of their interactions prior to the end were bitter and tinged with hatred. 

Dudley wondered how Harry was doing. He’d heard nothing since the start of . . . the war, he supposed. But he had remembered the sort of things Harry always paid attention to in the news, and had managed to follow along somewhat, and about a year after Harry had left, the strange deaths and “gas explosions” and “terrorist attacks” had tapered off. 

Occasionally he’d see someone in the streets or the pubs, and would somehow just know that something was off. They’d be a little too strange, a little too excited about something normal. They’d be wearing the wrong things, or the right things but in the wrong way, or the right things in the right way but the wrong colors or size.    
  
And sometimes, just sometimes, he’d stop them and ask . . . ask after the news. Ask after his cousin, in a roundabout way. They all seemed to know each other, especially Harry. And once he figured out the right things to day, they’d usually just spill their guts. It was like being part of a secret club, a bit exciting, a bit inconvenient, but he never really regretted the strange looks he’d get for talking to the homeless bloke outside the Tesco’s, or for trying to approach an owl that hung around a little too long. 

Dennis nudged him and lifted his mostly empty pint, indicating it was time to either settle up or go for another round. Dudley sighed and thumbed towards the bar, indicating he’d place the orders. 

He stepped round a fellow who was looking a little green about the gills and a girl that was gesturing very enthusiastically with a whiskey in hand and rapped his knuckles on the bar, holding up four fingers when the barkeeper turned his way. He arranged the stray nuts on the bar into the shape of a frowning face as he waited.

The girl who’d snubbed him before, curly black hair and wide dark eyes and ugly purple jumper, suddenly appeared at his elbow. She frowned at him briefly as he quickly dashed the nuts back into a meaningless jumble, before moving into the space between him and the bar and staring eerily up at him. He shifted uncomfortably.

“You’re unhappy,” she said abruptly. He shrugged. “I’m bored.”

“No,” she insisted. “Not just right now. Always. Since the dementors.”

He startled, and really looked at her for the first time since she’d come over. She met his eyes unashamedly, and he found himself caught in her gaze.  _ She knows, _ his mind whispered to him,  _ she knows about Harry _ . 

Because that’s what it’s always been about, hasn’t it, it’s always been about Harry. Since he was a child, everything had always been about Harry. He was the freak, he was the reason Dudley was the best, until suddenly he wasn’t. Then he was the reason Dudley hated everything about himself, felt sick all the time and couldn’t even look his father in the eye when he told him he was proud of Dudley, because how could he ever accept praise from the sort of monster that could hate a  _ child _ for no good reason. The reason that Dudley still woke up screaming some nights because he’d had a nightmare, only the nightmare was him, was that he was still what he’d seen that night five years ago in Surrey.  _ You’re a horrible, fat pig who doesn’t even deserve to live, you don’t deserve anything you have, you’re a waste of space, nobody will ever truly love you because you have nothing worth loving about you, look at what you’ve done, look at the people who made you, look at what they’ve done . . .  _

The girl blinked, and Dudley looked away again, burning with shame because she knew. He flinched when she put a hand on his chest. 

“Dudley,” she said softly, “if you could do anything, change anything, at any cost. Would you want to?”

He forced himself to look back down into her eyes, and he knew what she meant.  _ If you could take it all back, and still have to face it all again, would you?  _ And he knew that he would. That he would face it all again even if it meant nothing had changed, because the him he’d been five years ago wouldn’t, and just by facing it again he’d be a different man than the one he’d seen that night. 

She must have known this somehow, known it the way she’d known everything else, maybe. Maybe asked him just so he’d know it too, because she nodded and leaned up on her toes to whisper into his mouth  _ “You’ve got to trust me,” _ before placing a hand on his forehead and  _ shoving _ , causing him to fall hard on the ground, cracking his head nearly in half on the sticky tile. Everything went fuzzy and dark, and he heard the general uproar in the pub just as his hearing faded.

When he next opened his eyes, everything was too bright and too loud and too wet and he couldn’t breathe or speak or cough so he  _ screamed _ , only it sounded different than normal. And everything was melting together in the harsh light, and he felt like he was being thrown about by the seas before being wrapped in something soft and placed on something warm and firm and a face swam into view.

Somehow he did not feel reassured by the fact that it was his father’s face, four stone slimmer and 20 years younger, split in a wide grin as he grumbled proudly of strapping young lads and the good lungs on his newborn son. Dudley thought he might be forgiven for crying just then, so that’s what he did.

Nobody cared.


	2. Chapter 2

Dudley’s parents doted on him horrendously for the first few months of his life, though probably just about as much as they had the first go around. Possibly even more so because he “refused to latch” out of sheer embarrassment, and it took him a few weeks to get used to the fact that he was supposed to scream whenever he was hungry in the middle of the night, or he would miss more than one feeding.

His mum, especially, was always bragging to the neighbors about how quiet he was and how little trouble he gave them, her “sweet boy.” Some of the other mothers looked bitterly jealous at these revelations, and honestly Dudley couldn’t blame them after spending a few teatimes bundled into the same playpen as a squalling, screaming Piers Polkiss, still rat-faced and scrawny even as an infant.

For the most part, he didn’t have as much trouble as he might have assumed that first day. His parents were younger and somewhat less bitter than they’d been when last he saw them. He was weak and tired almost all the time, so he looked upon it all as a sort of convalescence. He couldn’t walk or crawl or even lift his head most of the time, so of course he wouldn’t be able to feed himself or go to the bathroom himself and would have to be carried all the time.

This attitude didn’t always help very much, especially when his diet consisted entirely of “mother’s milk” and he learned he couldn’t really control most of his bodily functions. Especially vomiting. It wasn’t really sickness though, just a sort of inability to keep all his food from flowing back up his throat sometimes. He’d gotten quite good at avoiding getting it on his clothing, once he’d learn that it didn’t always necessitate an immediate change. Also at aiming at Aunt Marge whenever she came to visit. Her tweed was rather scratchy.

The biggest difficulty was boredom, actually. It was fine for the first few months, when he was mostly sleeping whenever he wasn’t being fed or bathed. But as he slowly gained more awareness and more control over lifting his head, he quickly lost interest in many of the baby toys placed for his enjoyment. He quickly learned to show interest in the small books he discovered at teatimes with other infants and small children in the neighborhood, and expressed excitement whenever one of his parents read to him, especially if it was from the newspaper or a book they were reading themselves. Vernon, especially, had taken to reading him raunchy novels and the more gory news stories, waving it off as “he doesn’t understand anything yet, he doesn’t know what I’m saying!”

When he was about three months old, Petunia received a letter from an owl. He squealed in excitement from his position on the floor of the kitchen in the portable bassinet Petunia placed him in as she went about doing housework. She glanced warily at him as she took the letter from the owl and quickly broke the seal to read it. Dudley couldn’t quite make out her expression as she read it, but she moved to a drawer and pulled out a pen to jot something down on the back of the parchment before stuffing it back into the envelope and handing it back to the bird, latching the window shut again as soon as it took off.

Petunia sighed heavily for a moment, leaning against the counter like she wouldn’t be able to stand if she didn’t have support. Dudley gurgled enquiringly at her, and she smiled tiredly before moving towards him and scooping him up.

“Mummy’s been very silly, Diddy-dums. But Aunty Lily is coming to visit! And baby Harry! Horrible common name, that, but oh well. Lily’s always had rather simple tastes.” Dudley squealed again, though he wouldn’t have been able to name a tone if asked.

Harry was coming. And Lily, who wasn’t dead yet. But she would be, wouldn’t she, because Dudley knew some of what went on in his lifetime. Knew from the papers he’d fished out of the bin in the park where Harry thought he wouldn’t be caught tossing them out. Harry was special. He was “chosen.” By that dark lord thingy or by fate or by God, Dudley didn’t know, but everyone in Harry’s world sure as hell did.

When Lily came to visit, it was in a lumpy grey jumper and brown pants and her bright red hair pulled back into a frizzy ponytail, and she was still one of the most beautiful people Dudley had ever seen. Harry was bundled up in a blue blanket and tinier than Dudley had thought possible, only a few weeks old and blue eyes already starting to melt into startling green. Dudley was placed on his stomach on a blanket beside a sleeping Harry, and he held his head up to look at him. Harry had a scrunched up little face and a large amount of soft black hair that curled up at the ends. Dudley tried to reach out to pet Harry’s face, partly to try and find some resemblance to the Harry he knew and partly because it was something other children had done to him frequently, and he had taken to emulating them for observers’ sakes.

He ended up losing his balance and dropping his head onto Harry’s arm, which startled the other baby badly and caused him to start crying. Lily just laughed and lifted Harry to shush him, and Petunia’s nose only wrinkled slightly at the noise.

At one point Dudley found himself being held by Lily as Petunia went to go get some tea, and he stared hard into her eyes that were just like Harry’s, hoping to convey that she had so little time left, that she should be spending it wisely.

“You’ve got grandmother’s mouth,” she told him mock-seriously. “And Tuney’s looks.” She smiled then.

“Good boy.” She murmured. “Your father looks like a troll.”

When Petunia came back into the room, stilling at the sight of her son in her sister’s arms, Lily turned towards her.

“He’s perfect, Tuney. Truly.”

Petunia gave Lily a tentative smile, but somehow the meeting still ended with Petunia screaming at Lily to get out and Harry wailing at the top of his lungs, and the next time Dudley saw Harry he had come to stay.  



	3. Chapter 3

Dudley developed a whole host of talents for dealing with his parents when it came to Harry. He employed some of the tactics he had the first go around, mainly throwing crying fits when things didn’t go his way. This didn’t happen often, as he had come to learn that tantrums were embarrassing back in Smelting’s and he usually avoided them at all costs.

He learned it was easier to be subtle. If Harry wasn’t given enough to eat, Dudley would feign illness and give his share to Harry. If Petunia tried to lock Harry in the cupboard, or punish him if he didn’t deserve it, Dudley would demand to play with Harry. When they finally entered primary, Dudley squinted and peered and held books too close to his face until Petunia took him to an optometrist, and he insisted Harry come along. When the Optometrist declared his vision perfect and tried to suggest a reading disability, Dudley loudly told them (as clearly as he could with his front two teeth missing) that that was how Harry read, and he thought that was how you were supposed to read. (And when Petunia selected what had to have been the ugliest pair she could find for Harry to try on, Dudley complained that they looked stupid and picked out a more sensible pair, with thin, flexible arms and plastic lenses.)

Unfortunately, after the first few times he had to cry to get his way – or rather, Harry’s way – Harry caught on and spent nearly a month crying whenever things didn’t go exactly the way he liked. Thankfully it didn’t sway Petunia or Vernon much, if ever, but then Harry started to try it on Dudley.

Dudley ended up pinching him and telling him that he was only allowed to cry if he was hurt.

For the most part, things were . . . fine. He didn’t really remember much of his childhood the first go around, and his parents had nothing to compare him to. Harry didn’t really understand that Petunia and Vernon hated him, and Dudley apparently came up with good enough explanations to fool him whenever they treated him coldly. People sometimes found him strange, he knew, but he was quiet, and avoided causing any trouble. Harry was like an annoying like brother, but he was good enough company and Dudley had his own room to retreat to whenever it all became too much.

And really, whenever his future pretending to be a child seemed truly dismal, Dudley would simply close his eyes and remind himself, of all the things he learned that night when he was fifteen and Harry saved his life and he didn’t deserve it. _You’re a horrible, fat pig who doesn’t even deserve to live . . ._

He should’ve known it was too good to last.


	4. Chapter 4

“Dud _ley_ ,” Harry moaned from where he was lounging on Dudley’s bed. “Why can’t we go to Piers’ place? He has the _best_ games.” God, Harry whined a lot. Dudley didn’t remember him being nearly this obnoxious the first time around. Then again, it was probably because he had been too busy being the obnoxious one.

“You can go. I’m not stopping you.”

Harry let out a piercing whine. “But I _want_ you to come!”

Dudley didn’t bother to look up from the homework he was pretending to struggle with. He had never been especially bright, so he figured he better set the bar low now while he was still ahead. Harry, the little shit, coasted through and did well on nearly everything and barely ever spent any time on his homework.

“Don’t want to,” he mumbled. “His whole house smells like milk.” _And he’s a sadistic little jerk._ Dudley had done his best to stay well clear of the many associates he’d had while growing up. He could barely stand them those last few years before Uni, and he doubted them being stupider in higher pitch would lend him any patience with them now.

“ _Pleeeeaase_?” Harry cajoled. Dudley ground his teeth in annoyance.

“How about this,” he sighed as he turned around, “if you go alone to Piers’ house and let me finish my homework, I’ll be the bad guy at recess tomorrow.” Harry’s worst fear was being chosen as the bad guy in games at recess. Dudley really couldn’t care less, but it worked as a good bargaining chip whenever Harry was being especially clingy.

Harry scrunched up his little eight year old face into a pout, obviously not pleased but unable to pass up the opportunity. “Fine,” he grumbled before flouncing out of the room and slamming Dudley’s door behind him. Dudley listened as he clattered down the stairs and out the front door, shouting a farewell to Aunt Petunia somewhere along the way.

Dudley moved to the window to watch Harry sprint down the street, then counted to thirty to be certain he was gone before moving back to the desk and quickly finishing all the problems he had left. He pulled out the latest comic book he had bought from the store and then laid on his bed to relax for a while. He had a thrill of joy when, fifteen minutes after Harry had left, his mother knocked on his door and asked if he would like to go to the shops with her. He declined, and though she fretted about leaving him alone, they lived in a safe neighborhood and she wouldn’t be gone for more than a half hour.

The second she closed the front door behind her, Dudley heaved a sigh of relief. He rarely had the chance to relax and simply _be_. He didn’t really do anything in particular, he just . . . let go. He didn’t have to be aware of the fact that he might have to put on a show at any moment, trying to convince everyone of his normalcy.

He wondered at the many opportunities open to him. What should he do with his twenty minutes of freedom? Read the paper? Read a challenging book? Find a dirty movie on tv?

None of these things were anything he might have considered back when he had been an actual adult, but there was a certain excitement at being able to do as he wished and not constantly worry what others would think of it.

He ended up mostly sitting on the couch in silence until he heard a car pull into their driveway. He quickly jumped up and flipped on the telly before moving back to the couch and attempting to look mindlessly absorbed in the program playing, something about monkeys.

Vernon cursed loudly when he opened the door and the knob came off in his hand. They’d been having problems with it since Aunt Marge accidentally pulled it off during her visit last week. He dropped his briefcase by the door and fussed with it for a few minutes, trying to fix it, but only succeeded in causing the knob on the opposing side to fall to the floor with a loud bang. He cursed again.

Dudley thought maybe he should say something to alert his father to his presence, but he wasn’t sure how to do that without angering Vernon more. He settled on moving back towards the kitchen as quietly as possible and faking a loud reappearance. Vernon grunted at him as he clomped into the room.

“Where’s your mother?” he asked, voice tight.

“She went to the shops,” Dudley said as blandly as possible. He’d seen his father like this before, in his other life, and a few times in this one, but there had always been a buffer. His mother, offering to get him a brandy, or a neighbor or business associate forcing Vernon to keep his cool for appearance’s sake, or Harry, a convenient whipping boy and a perfect excuse to blame him for anything that goes wrong because he could theoretically have caused it.

For the first time in his life, Dudley was frightened of his own father.

Vernon dropped the knob again. He struggled, out of breath as he levered his overweight form down to the floor to retrieve it and then back up again.

“ _Can no one fix a ruddy thing around here?_ ” Dudley flinched. Vernon was shouting outright now.

Just when Dudley thought it might be about time to bolt, Harry came clattering in through the back door.

“Dudley, Dudley, you won’t _believe_ what Piers said about Evelyn in the year above us, you know, the one with the shiny hair who always –”

Dudley turned and shook his head slightly, causing Harry to pause in what was sure to be something extraordinarily juvenile. Dudley may have shielded him thus far from the worst of his parents, but Harry had still grown to be wary around them, and to trust Dudley in moments like these.

“Where the hell have you been, boy?” Vernon snapped, swelling up and forward like a rhinoceros raring for a fight. Monkeys chattered in the background, and it took Dudley a moment to remember that the telly was still on.

“He finished his homework first, I told him to go play with Piers so I could concentrate.” Dudley explained quickly. _He’s only done what we’ve told him to, he’s doing normal things, he’s done nothing but be a normal little boy._

“ _Shut up!_ ” Vernon roared. “I wasn’t talking to _you_!”

Harry chose then to open his fat mouth. He never was very good at keeping his trap shut.

“ _You_ shut up! Why are you being so mean, he hasn’t done anything!” Harry yelled back, pushing himself past Dudley. With their changes in diets from the last time around, Harry was still almost scarily thin but he had nearly half an inch on Dudley thanks to his latest growth spurt, and Dudley, while still a bit soft around the middle, was only roughly the same size.

Dudley used what he remembered from years of rugby, wrestling, and boxing to elbow Harry behind him just in time to catch a doorknob to the temple.

* * *

When Dudley finally came to in the hospital, Petunia needn’t have gestured fearfully over the doctor’s shoulder to not say anything about what had happened. He covered for his father all on his own.

_Yes doctor, of course doctor, well you see I don’t really remember quite well but I was hiding behind the door waiting for my father to get home, you see he works very hard for us so I don’t always get to see him as often as I’d like . . ._

The doctors bought it hook, line and sinker, doting on the small family of four with those precious little boys who really care so much for each other, _did you know the one with the dark hair is adopted, you’d never guess it, they’re so close, they’re such a sweet family._

After they went home, Harry refused to leave Dudley’s side for weeks. He watched Vernon, his eyes full of spite and fear. Petunia did her best to pretend nothing had ever happened.

Dudley ignored them all, and knew that this was part of the price he had to pay to be the man he wanted to be. He would have to face what Harry had faced. And he would accept it.


	5. Chapter 5

Three more years passed in much the same manner as the ones before. Dudley ended up with quite a few more bumps and bruises along the way than he had before, and Harry quite a few less. Petunia was constantly nervous and jumped at small sounds. Vernon was occasionally a little too angry or a little too drunk, but for the most part did his best to spoil his family while under the watch of the neighbors and pretend those rare occasions never occurred at all. 

By the time the year of his eleventh birthday rolled around, Dudley was feeling anxious, and so were his parents. The first time around he had assumed that they had honestly not expected a letter, or were unaware of the customs surrounding Harry’s world. Now he could tell that they knew the inevitable was coming, they were just determined to avoid it until the last possible moment. 

Dudley began taking a vested interest in retrieving the mail every day. He told his parents that they had had a class project at the beginning of last term that involved writing a letter to their “future selves”, and that his teacher had promised to send them out at the end of the year. This was actually true. He just declined to mention that he had received his by the end of april. 

However the beginning of the end of normality came in the form of a knock at the door just past Dudley’s birthday at the beginning of June, and there was not one letter, but two.

* * *

“I don't understand,” Dudley said dully, vaguely aware of how dumb he sounded. 

The stiff older woman on the settee took a deep breath and closed her eyes as if seeking patience.

“Well, yes, I do see how this might appear, but perhaps another demonstration- ” the severe looking woman said. She gave her long wand an elegant little wave, as if warming up to turn their lamp into an ostrich, or something equally ludicrous. Dudley shook his head quickly, before she could do anything else unnatural to the furniture. One cow in the sitting room was quite enough, thank you. 

“No, no, I . . . I just don’t understand,” he said again, feeling rather thick. The woman, Professor McGoggles or something, sighed irritably. He struggled to explain without explaining  _ how _ exactly, that he knew he didn’t have magic. That he shouldn’t have gotten a letter, that he didn’t  _ want _ a letter, that Harry’s magic must have rubbed off on him or something because surely there was no way, was there?

“It’s just . . .  _ I  _ can’t . . . Harry’s always the one, who . . .” He couldn’t quite bring himself to use the ‘m’ word just yet. 

McGuffin frowned. “Your name has been down for at least ten years now, there is no doubt. And Harry’s mother was a very powerful witch, so it’s very possible that the gift has been passed down through the family but simply has not manifested itself until recently.”

Harry perked up on the couch beside Dudley. “My mum was a witch?” 

McGunnal blinked at them from behind her spectacles. “Why, of course – surely you’ve –”

“Mum and dad don’t like when we talk about them.” Dudley explained. He’d remembered this, too, from the first time – how his father had always gone purple and his mother white at any mention of Harry’s parents, until that fateful night in the hut on the rock in the sea when his mother had screeched about Lily in a way that had frightened even Dudley. 

“Dudley, Dudley, this is perfect, we can go together! And you won’t have to wear those stupid pants.” Harry hadn’t been able to get over the Smeltings uniform. He’d nearly done himself an injury rolling around on the floor laughing when Dudley had tried it on. He pinched Harry in the side but let him wriggle away quickly enough. Dudley was currently ahead by a few inches, but he’d come to learn that Harry was vicious with those bony elbows. 

“What if . . . what if I don’t want to go?” Dudley asked, not looking up from his hands clenched in his lap even as Harry abruptly ceased his excited bouncing on the couch beside him. 

When he finally glanced up, McGuigan's eyes were wide behind the tiny horn-rimmed spectacles perched on her nose. 

“Well, I suppose -- I can’t imagine why -- perhaps once you’ve learned a bit more about magic . . .” She trailed off. “In any case, we’ll speak more when your parents -- and guardians,” she added in deference to Harry’s presence, “return.” Dudley  _ squirmed _ . He couldn’t imagine how this was going to go. The first go around, his parents had gone half mad trying to avoid Harry’s world. And now, they’d been given no escape -- they’d shown up, in person, had laid a claim to Dudley as well as Harry. His parents had locked themselves in the kitchen for the past half hour, the occasional shout or bang echoing out to those of them in the sitting room.

A series of horrific scenarios played out in his mind, each more terrifying and blood-soaked than its predecessor. He could imagine his mother murdering them all and then herself with a butcher’s knife, the severe looking witch attempting to end the violence and bringing about the ultimate end for all of them, his father picking Harry up and shaking him like a doll until something broke irreparably and the witch killing them all out of spite. Because she  _ would  _ protect Harry first. It was her prerogative, as a part of their strange society, to ensure Harry would be around for a while yet. It was  _ Dudley’s _ prerogative to ensure Harry would be around for a while yet. 

Harry had just reached over and grabbed onto Dudley’s sleeve, shaking it lightly to get his attention, when the kitchen door slammed open and Vernon came stalking out. 

“ _ YOU! _ ” he shouted, wagging a single sausagy finger in Harry’s face. Harry reflexively grasped his glasses as he flinched back into Dudley, away from the flailing hand.

“We should’ve  _ drowned you _ when you were dumped on our doorstep!” Harry’s fingernails dug into Dudley’s arm. 

“ _ Mister _ Dursley!” the witch said sharply. “That is quite enough of that sort of--” Vernon swung around to face her, managing a last, lone “ _ YOU PEOPLE! _ ” before grabbing his coat off the rack and slamming the door behind him as he left. Dudley felt Harry flinch when the rack toppled and hit the floor. 

“He’s going.” Dudley whipped his head around to look at his mother, who stood in the hallway to the kitchen with her arms wrapped around herself.  “Both of them.” Suddenly she moved, going for Vernon’s wallet, where he’d left it on the side table. 

“You need money, right? For the supplies?” She shoved a fistful of notes into the witch’s hands. “Is that enough?”

The witch looked affronted, spluttering around her reply.

“Take them,” Petunia insisted, folding the older woman’s hand around the notes. “for their supplies. I don’t want to go. But that’s why you’re here? To take them?” Petunia said, an edge of panic to her voice. 

“W-Well -- I suppose, yes, I can take them, but don’t you want --” Petunia shook her head sharply. “I don’t want to go. I’ve already been, with Lily.” She shuddered. “Horrid place.” She glanced over her shoulder, to the front window. “You can take them? It’s enough money?” 

The witch nodded, still seeming confused. “Yes, yes of course --” 

Petunia nodded again. “Take them please. I grant my permission, as guardian.” She turned quickly and twitched the curtains back a fraction, before straightening them and turning back around. Dudley suddenly realized she hadn’t looked at anyone’s face since she’d left the kitchen. She hadn’t even looked in Dudley’s direction.

“I-I have things to do. Please, take them.” With that she swiftly climbed the stairs, nearly silently save for the step that always creaked. Dudley swallowed drily. 

“I . . .” the witch trailed off momentarily, staring at the notes in her hand, before seeming to recover herself somewhat. “Straighten yourselves up,” she instructed, throwing a glance over the two of them, before returning her gaze to the landing where Petunia had disappeared. “We’ve some errands to run.” 


	6. Chapter 6

“Dudley?” Harry tugged on his cousin’s sleeve. Dudley hadn’t spoken since they’d left the house, had barely even looked at Harry, or Professor McGonagall, and they were on the train now, nearly to London. “Dudley, whatsa matter?” 

Maybe he was getting one of his headaches. That happened sometimes, that Dudley would get like that, wouldn’t play with Harry or talk to him, just wanted to be alone. Headaches, is what he’d said before. Maybe that was it now. Harry wanted to be more worried about it, but, but--  _ magic _ . He could barely sit still. He wondered if he’d be able to tell Emmaline, in the next class. She was always so nice and she helped out in the library after school and with the Infant school kids, the little ones during recess, and her hair was so  _ shiny _ \-- but probably not. He didn’t think that sort of thing was probably usually allowed, what with him not knowing and all, and his  _ parents _ being magic . . . bizarre, is what it was. 

Harry sighed and turned away from where Dudley was brooding. He thought about what Uncle Vernon’d said . . .  _ should’ve drowned you-- _ Harry shook his head. He didn’t want to think about Uncle Vernon.  _ He’s just a mean old bastard, _ Harry thought to himself. It was something he’d heard before. Probably from Dudley. Dudley didn’t use a lot of bad words, not in front of Harry or the other kids in their year, but he sure knew a lot. He muttered them under his breath sometimes. Or said them to bullies. Dudley didn’t like bullies. Dudley was staring off into the corner of the train, now. Harry leaned forward on the edge of the seat to look, but there was nothing there. He frowned at Dudley but turned back to the Professor, who was sitting stiffly on the very edge of the plastic seat across from them, not even swaying with the motion of the train.

“Excuse me, ma’am, are you sure we can get all this in London?” Harry asked in a low voice, fingering the fold of his supply list where it was stashed in his pocket. He didn’t dare pull it out to read again beneath the stern gaze of the witch accompanying them. He blinked when she simply smiled enigmatically. 

“Of course, Mr. Potter. All in good time.” Just then the train pulled into the next station. 

“Ah,” she said as she stood smoothly. “I do believe this is our stop. Mr. Potter, do mind that you don’t lose your cousin,” she advised, casting an almost concerned look in Dudley’s direction. He’d risen, now, but was still staring towards the far end of the train. Harry gripped his sleeve and tugged him off the train after the Professor. It was a bit weird, this. Usually Dudley was the one dragging Harry along, making sure he didn’t wander away in the shops or cross the street with a car on the way. Dudley was always the one who took care of things. Of everything, really. Harry tried not to think of some of the things Dudley’d had to take care of for Harry, especially where Vernon was involved. Harry frowned to himself.  _ It’s just one of his headaches, _ he told himself.  _ It doesn’t have anything to do with Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia. They’re just . . . surprised, is all. Dudley too. _ Harry never was very good at convincing himself of things.

* * *

Dudley couldn’t look away. Since they’d gone into the underground, that girl, the one from years ago, she was standing in the corner of the train. Like a shadow, or a distorted photo. Everything about her was smeared and blurred -- her ugly jumper a smudge of purple leaning up against the partition, her face a twist of dark features. The only things that he could really see was her cloud of curly dark hair, and her deep, dark eyes that bored into him from down the train carriage. He shuddered, but couldn’t bring himself to look away. 

Everything about this afternoon was on constant replay in his head, turning over constantly as he tried to think of how else it could have gone. What would happen to him and Harry now? He knew Harry couldn’t leave that house, but would this woman really leave Harry with them when Vernon had outright threatened to  _ drown _ him? He wasn’t sure how desperate these people were to protect Harry from whatever dark, twisted things he needed protecting from, but Dudley wasn’t sure they’d find it worth the expense if Harry was under the roof of someone who’d threatened him. 

But maybe he was overthinking this. Harry had had it much worse before, in the other time, and no one had done anything then. Surely Vernon, or Petunia, or hell, even Dudley had to have said something at least that bad in front of one of Harry’s people before. It might just get brushed off as tempers running high, stress in the household. They’d seen no reason to remove Harry before, it wasn’t likely they’d find one now. 

He took a breath, and closed his eyes briefly against the burning gaze of the girl in the corner, ignoring Harry tugging on his sleeve. When he opened his eyes, the girl was still there. Dudley could feel his palms sweating.  _ What do you want? _ he tried to convey as their eyes bore into each others’.  _ Tell me what to do _ . Things were changing, now, and he didn’t know why. She was the one who’d done this, she was the one who’d know. He stood as he saw the witch rising out of the corner of his eye. His concentration was broken for a moment when he stumbled after Harry, and when he looked back, she was gone. 

_ I need answers, _ he begged. She’d given him everything, she’d given him a chance to not make the same mistakes, but he couldn’t go into this blind. He felt sick, his vision was swimming and his skin felt clammy even as they emerged from the underground into the weak summer sunshine. He didn’t know what he was doing, anymore. He was falling, fast, and he had no idea where he’d be landing. 

Dudley shook his head and brushed off Harry’s hand. He needed to pay attention to where he was going. They were entering a dirty old pub, now, and he shivered in the sudden coolness. He wished he’d worn a jacket. His neck felt exposed. He felt jumpy, like he’d done for weeks right after the dementors, his first go around. 

The witch led them through to the back, to an alley only marginally less grubby than the pub, with brick walls and a few moldy looking bins. Dudley scoffed at the way Harry’s nose wrinkled at their location while the witch gave her wand a little flourish and then began tapping a seemingly random sequence of bricks on the wall. For a moment nothing happened, and it only served to make Dudley twitchier when the bricks finally began to move.

For a moment, Dudley was frozen, as the bricks folded neatly away into a soaring archway and revealed a bustling hive of magical activity secreted away from the rest of London. Then he felt his face break into a wide grin, because no matter what his parents had told him, no matter that all his experiences with magic thus far had been horrible and painful and traumatizing, this was glorious. This was surreal, in the most magnificent way possible. This was  _ magic. _

The witch was smirking slightly at his expression.

“Welcome to Diagon Alley, Mr. Dursley, Mr. Potter. If you’ll come right this way,” she gestured with a sweep of her arm, as her school-marmy dress melted into an emerald green robe. Dudley shot her a glance, but acquiesced quickly. He could barely keep his eyes ahead of him as his attention kept straying to all the marvelous things that were happening all around. If  _ this _ was magic, why had he always been so afraid before? Why had it always seemed so terrifying, even in these past few years? Out of the corner of his eye, Dudley caught a flash of purple. 

_ Right _ , he thought with a shudder. He caught the dark eyes as they followed his progress down the alley, and dared a nod in their general direction. He’d formed those preconceptions for a reason. Best not get hasty now. Even if he wasn’t quite sure how someone who appeared to dye cats different unnatural colors for a living could possibly be an evil mastermind. It was weird, sure, but Dudley had come to learn that anything was weird, once you gave it a close enough look.


	7. Chapter 7

Dudley tried to ignore how his hands were shaking. He felt like he used to after a boxing match he’d had to lose weight for -- wrung out, like he’d been starving for days and he’d just expended the last of his reserved energy in one final melee. For  _ hours _ , he’d been assaulted from all sides by everything his parents had raised him to hate, everything that he’d learned to simultaneously seek out and hide from at all costs as an adult. It was both terrifying and amazing, everything he’d been conditioned to fear and every child’s wildest, most heartfelt fantasies all rolled into one great, colorful calamity. 

Harry’s eyes had nearly popped right out of his skull by this point, with how he was gazing round at everything. Dudley didn’t blame him. It was only his experience from his former life that kept him from staring with such excitement. He’d noticed the witch -- Professor McGonagall, he knew now -- watching him closely. Thankfully it seemed he still held enough childish wonder at this new world to allay suspicions, for now at least, but there was something strangely pitying in the looks she’d given him.

They were buying wands, now (his was apparently mundane at best, as much as anything in this world could be considered mundane -- ten inches of solid, unyielding oak with a core of dragon heartstring, picked on his second try -- very rigid, good for basic transfigurations, he’d been assured by a somewhat smug McGonagall). It had been surreal, holding that stick in his hand for the first time, knowing what it was and what it could do. What  _ he _ could do with it. It made his skin crawl. Dudley had tucked it away with the rest of their purchases at the first opportunity.

Harry had to have tried out nearly half the store by that point. Dudley, having finally had some genuine manners knocked into him in uni had offered the lone, spindly chair to the somewhat elderly professor and was sorely regretting it by that point. His knees were shaking.

The girl had wandered in his peripheral through last several hours of shopping, like some kind of colorful, faceless spirit dogging his steps. She never walked through anyone, and he could never see her moving, but there she was -- always somewhere between terrifyingly solid and intangible, always close enough that he knew she was there but far enough that he couldn’t attempt to interact with her without seeming like a complete lunatic (not that he was certain that was a trait that would be found unique among those he’d encountered thus far). She had been haunting the stoop across the way for the duration of their trip into the wand shop. Sometimes Dudley thought he saw her figure swaying, but she was always still when he turned to look, as he was doing currently. 

He turned back to the shop and was struck by the gaze of the old man, Ollivander. Bulbous, glowing eyes pinned him for the barest of moments before they seemed to flick beyond him to look at the stoop his specter was occupying, before turning back to Dudley and giving him a suspiciously knowing look. Dudley felt his heart stutter, but before he could say anything, the old man turned away.

“No, no, no, that won’t do at all!” He cried, whipping the wand out of Harry’s hand and casting it into the pile with all the others. He seemed far too gleeful about this all. 

“I know . . . But, no . . . Perhaps--” the old man said as he wandered off into the back of the shop. Dudley was halfway convinced that the man’s strange demeanor was all for show.

“Here, this one. Go ahead,” he encouraged Harry with a slightly manic glint in his eyes. Dudley scowled at him.

Harry grasped the wand, and Dudley suddenly recognized it. It had been Harry’s constant companion for the better part of many summers, always sticking out of his pocket or tucked into his shirtsleeves. Harry’s touch caused the wand to emit red and golden sparks into the air, in a shower much more impressive than the bronze one Dudley’s wand had produced.

The wand maker’s eyes were manic with glee now, as he leaned forward to tell Harry something terrible and haunting about his future and the man who'd wielded his wand’s twin, but McGonagall was quick to step in. 

“Come along boys, I believe that's it for our shopping. It's well past time I get you big back home. I believe this should cover the price of the wands?” She said briskly, snapping a small stack of fat golden coins down on the counter and grasping Harry and Dudley by the shoulder without waiting for a reply.

“Let's see, have you got -- that's a good lad, Mr. Dursley,” she said, seeing that Dudley had a hand on each trunk. “That's it. Now I want you to hold your breath and --” 

With a twist and a crack they were gone from the shop, squeezing through space as if it were a vacuum. Dudley wasn't quite certain how his lungs stayed inflated and his bones intact through the journey, but a few moments later he was falling to his arse in his own backyard. He heard Harry gag beside him and quickly put his head between his knees, breathing shallowly. 

“I do apologize, boys, I had forgotten how jarring apparition can be,” the professor said somewhat flatly. Dudley managed to look up at her and noticed the tightness of the lines around her mouth. Harry, still on his feet and already recovered shook his head. 

“Not at all, Professor, that was marvelous! Can all wizards and witches do that? Can I learn to do that? How did we get here so quickly?” He was babbling. Dudley didn't remember Harry being so talkative the first go around, but in recent years it had become difficult to get him to ever shut up. 

“Harry,” he said, “come help me with these.” Dudley gestured to the trunks full of their purchases. “And put that away before you poke someone's eye out,” he told Harry, who was still clutching his new wand in hand. Harry stared down at it in amazement, as if having forgotten about it. For some reason however, Harry generally listened when Dudley told him to do something, and quickly bounced to his own trunk (burgundy to Dudley’s own hunter green) and quickly stowed his wand within. He began to drag it into the house behind him, babbling to Dudley all the way without checking to see he saw following. 

Dudley waited a few moments before turning back to the witch, whose face had settled into a strange, contemplative sort of look. 

“Thank you, professor,” Dudley said as he held out a hand. “For everything.” 

She took it with a pleasantly surprised look on her face. “You're quite welcome, Mr. Dursley. It was my pleasure.”

Dudley gave her a polite nod before frowning. “If I could say something, professor . . .” He began, not sure how to move forward. The professor gestured for him to continue, seeing the question in his face. 

“I don't really know all about it, but I do know some. At least, more than Harry knows, I think. And whatever Mr. Ollivander was going to say, that you didn't want Harry to hear . . . Well, I think he should know, before he walks into that school, why people in funny cloaks have been wanting to shake his hand in Tesco’s since he was little.” Because that's what it was all about, wasn't it? That Harry was special, that Harry had to be the one to save them. That Harry  _ would  _ be the one to save them, at least he had before. And Dudley wanted to make sure that Harry could do it without having screaming nightmares before he was fifteen. 

The last go around, it hadn't been the prim and proper professor, but that giant man who'd come blasting in and taken Harry away. Dudley didn't know if Harry had been told then, but he hadn't been now, and he thought Harry should know what these people thought of him, what would be expected of him. And Dudley couldn't be the one to explain it to him. That had to come from someone from that world. ( _ Coward _ , his mind whispered.  _ You're just afraid he'll hate you. _ ) 

The professor looked shocked, but Dudley didn't wait for a response. The witch would do as she pleased and he doubted a word from him would change that. He was going to go inside, lock the trunk and all its accursed contents in the closet, and go to bed regardless of the hour or of what anyone else wanted. It had been a long day. 

He tried to ignore the specter glaring after him from her place in the rose bush. He wasn't successful. 


	8. Chapter 8

Dudley woke up late the next afternoon to a silent house. He stumbled out of bed -- still in his clothes and shoes from the day before -- to find the car still gone and his father with it, and Harry conspicuously absent. He didn’t know if his mother was gone too or just hiding in her room. He didn’t check. 

Instead Dudley packed up everything that he would need to bring with him come summer’s end, anything he could live without for the next few months, and brought it downstairs with him. He pulled his trunk out from the cupboard under the stairs (truly just a cupboard now, with Harry having occupied the smallest bedroom from the beginning), and organized it right there in the hall. He didn’t want these things in his room. 

As Dudley was heaving the packed trunk back into the cupboard, Harry opened the front door. He was holding a familiar snowy owl in its cage and had a strange look on his face. 

“Ah,” he said in surprise at seeing Dudley in the front hall. “From Professor McGonagall,” he said simply, hefting the cage a bit as he spoke.

“Oh. Good,” Dudley replied awkwardly. Harry nodded vaguely.

Dudley felt like he’d been in a dream since the letters had come and brought the horrible news with them. It was like the wall that had always been present between Dudley and Harry in their first lifetime had risen again. He wondered what Harry was thinking about all this, but instead of saying anything he turned back to the trunk and left Harry and his owl to thump up the stairs. 

_ It doesn't matter _ , Dudley told himself.  _ I don’t need to know what she told him. _

Harry never did say what exactly the Professor had told him. Dudley never asked. 

* * *

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it,” Dudley said as he waved Harry away. They were trying to maneuver the two heavy trunks out of the boot of the cab and onto the carts Harry and Dudley had wheeled over. The cabbie sat with the driver’s door open, smoking as he watched them. He seemed caught between the conflicting desires to get them out of his car faster and to avoid doing any physical labor. 

Early that morning, when Dudley had woken up, he had found the car and his father gone yet again and his mother sitting, white-lipped, at the kitchen table. When he came into the room, she quickly rose and retreated to her bedroom, averting her eyes from him the whole time. Dudley felt as if he’d been living with ghosts that summer. Everyone in the house seemed to constantly tiptoe and avoid each other. He’d laid awake at night, listening to the others in the house creak silently up and down the stairs, to the kitchen and back to their bedrooms all without ever speaking to one another. They’d fallen into routines that successfully kept themselves to themselves and rarely strayed. Dudley hadn’t seen his father in weeks.

Dudley had used the money he knew his mother kept in the biscuit tin for groceries to call them a cab, his hands sweating all the while. Harry hadn't seemed to find the elder Dursleys’ absence strange, which Dudley figured was for the best. 

“I'm just as big as you are, let me help!” Harry insisted, shoving Dudley aside and grasping one end of the trunk. Dudley side-eyed him but didn't say anything. Harry may have recently caught up in terms of height, but in Dudley’s opinion he was starting to look like a coat rack with eyes -- no substance to fill out the long, coltish limbs he'd recently sprouted. Dudley’d never been fat in this lifetime, but at a guess he'd say he had at least fifteen pounds on Harry, which at their size was quite a bit.

In the end, though, Harry was still right -- Dudley was just as incapable of lifting a trunk that size on his own as Harry was. It was only after another ten minutes of huffing and puffing and liberal swearing that they managed to get both trunks on the cart, along with Harry's owl. 

With the cabbie finally paid and gone, Dudley led Harry through to the station and began navigating the platforms and people swarming by. He’d spent the beginning of nearly every summer of his teenage years here with his parents, waiting in tense silence for Harry to return -- each year a little taller, a little harder. Dudley had never attempted to guess what went on at that school, had never asked. He was beginning to regret that decision now as anxiety twisted in his stomach.

“Is that it?” Dudley asked vaguely as the pillar came into sight, as if he hadn’t spent hours of his first life staring at that same spot with bitterness every year, waiting for the moment he could see Harry come out. Every year, there was something different -- he’d blink and Harry would suddenly be beside them, or a swarm of tourists would get in the way and by the time they were gone Harry would have emerged. 

“Yes!” Harry said too loudly, even given the surrounding bustle. “Yes,” he repeated a little quieter, blushing, “the professor said that one. The one between platforms nine and ten.” Harry was bouncing a little on the balls of his feet now, anxious but excited. Harry had been just as outwardly subdued as the Dursleys all summer long, but had been practically crawling out of his skin for weeks now. If Dudley weren’t so wary of the things to come, he might’ve felt the same. Instead all he felt was slightly sick.

“Alright, well, wait here for a minute with the carts.” Dudley directed as he propped his own trunk upright beside the next platform over. “I’ll go get us some sandwiches for the train,” he told Harry before he could argue. “And yes, I know, nothing with sprouts!” He added when Harry opened his mouth. Harry pouted a bit but obediently shuffled his cart over to Dudley’s and settled in to wait. 

Dudley glanced back to make sure Harry stayed put and then quickly made his way towards the kiosk they’d passed on the way in. They’d arrived plenty early, but heaving the trunks onto the carts had eaten into their time and he didn’t doubt it would take them just as long or longer to get them back off the carts and stowed away in the school’s train. Dudley swallowed, hard, against his suddenly dry throat.  _ Neglecting to name it doesn’t change where it is you’re going _ , Dudley thought. He’d been finding ways to put off the inevitable in his mind all summer long -- taking long walks, reading things he had no interest in, avoiding Harry’s room and the magical artifacts laid out inside at all costs. 

Dudley shook his head hard and focused on the selection of sandwiches available, putting it out of his head once more. There was only so much longer he could put it off. He might as well enjoy it while he could.

After paying for the sandwiches with the leftover money from the cab, Dudley weaved his way back through the crowd and tried not to think about how easy it would be to just lose himself in it. He could just . . . drift away. Harry would find his way onto the train. Harry was the one they wanted, anyways. Dudley, he didn’t matter -- why should he? Nothing that had happened before was likely to be affected much by his presence. He was extra, dead weight, expendable. His place wasn’t in this story line.

“Dudley! Over here!” Harry cut across Dudley’s dark thoughts, shouting across the platform and using the trunks as leverage to pull himself over the crowd. Dudley blinked. It was useless to think about that now. The shadow at his back, near constant since the letters had arrived, loomed in his mind. Any choice he’d had in the matter had already been made, long ago.  _ And I don’t regret it _ , he told himself. He didn’t, not really. Anything was better than what he had faced being for the rest of his life. What he  _ still _ faced being for the rest of his life.

_ -You should’ve just died in the womb, you could have never been born and it wouldn’t have changed a single moment of a single person’s life for the better, not one second- _

As he finally reached Harry and stowed the sandwiches in his jacket pocket, Dudley came to the realization that he wasn’t sure where to go from there. The whole day had been some sort of twisted recollection of all his past summers, coming back to haunt him. He’d known every moment of this trip before it had even started -- but not this. They’d only ever left Harry off to navigate for himself, and even that rarely. They’d picked him up every summer, but only ever dropped him off the once. They’d never seen what was beyond the barrier. Dudley’s hands were shaking. He’d wondered, before, of course he had. But he’d never wanted to know, and never less than in this moment. He could go the whole of his life never seeing anything more of magic, and he would still have seen too much of it. 

Except . . . except that hadn’t been the deal, had it. The girl, from the start, this was what she’d wanted. For him to face it all again. For him to suffer with it. Dudley took a deep breath and tried to ignore the way it shuddered in and out of his chest. 

“Alright, then, Harry, you lead the way,” Dudley offered, trying to make it seem conciliatory instead of fearful. He needed to remember that for Harry, this was exciting.  _ Magical _ . For most kids, this probably was. Not full of nausea inducing terror. 

Harry bounced a little on his heels, nearly toppling his trunk and the owl as he dragged it behind him. Dudley watched him walk on, following a ways behind, and blinked, and -- Harry was gone. He swallowed, his throat making a strange clicking sound from the sudden lack of moisture. 

_ Harry’s just on the other side of the barrier,  _ he told himself.  _ Nothing’s happened to him. He was fine the first time, all those years ago, nothing’s changed so much that he wouldn’t be fine.  _

Dudley had never much liked Harry, the first time around, but then he’d been stuck here, in this new place, with nothing much to look out for in his life besides Harry. And his parents had certainly done a shit enough job that maybe Dudley had been the only one looking out for him. That maybe Dudley had surpassed the boundaries of cousins to brothers to being the closest thing this Harry had ever had to a guardian. So he would follow Harry through to that godforsaken train, to that godforsaken school, to a place he wouldn’t touch if his life depended on it. Because there was a chance that Harry’s life really  _ did  _ depend on it. 

Dudley gripped his cart tight and began shouldering his way through the crowd towards the deathtrap that awaited him. The shadow that had been Dudley’s constant companion for the past months loomed.


	9. Chapter 9

“Dudley! Dudley, look at it!” Harry was calling. Dudley blinked hard, and blinked again, and stared into the nothing before him. It was black, everything was black -- had he gone blind? Is this what they did, was this the punishment for intruding on their society? They knew, didn’t they, that he didn’t belong, that he was some sort of imposter --

“Dudley?” Came Harry’s voice again, quietly, suddenly to his left. He swung his head round but he still couldn't see, and  _ oh my god what if I stay like this forever _ \-- 

But then the blackness was breaking up, dissolving in the midday brightness of the packed station, Harry’s worried face hovering too close. The ringing in his ears faded. 

“Yeah, I see it,” Dudley managed in a fairly steady tone. “That was amazing,” he offered blandly, turning towards the scarlet steam engine that was suddenly before him and ducking past Harry. There was a pause before he heard the clatter of the wheels on Harry’s trolley start up again. 

“Yeah,” Harry replied, the worry having slipped from his tone to be replaced by wonder. “It's  _ magnificent _ ,” he breathed.

“Yeah,” Dudley repeated dumbly.  _ Stupid, _ his mind whispered.  _ You fecking idiot. You just got dizzy. Or something. Calm down. You won’t be caught. She’ll have taken care of it.  _ Dudley refused to search for the shadow that had become his constant companion. He took measured breaths and tried not to look too closely at the roiling mass of people that somewhat resembled its counterpart on the other side of the barrier, if one was willing to look past the cats and owls and the funny people cloaks and hats. 

“Here, we need to get these up,” he told Harry as he led him to the closest train car. They were still early enough to find an unclaimed compartment fairly quickly, and they soon got about the business of hauling their trunks back off the trolleys and onto the train. It was only after having the first trunk nearly crush him to death three times that they managed to get it up into the train, let alone stored away properly. 

“Let’s- Let’s just take- a breather for a mo’,” Dudley panted with not inconsiderable effort. Harry, slumped half over the trunk, simply nodded as he pushed back his bangs, already dripping with sweat. The station was getting more crowded now, and with the compartments filling up quickly Harry and Dudley had to allow more and more people to pass them while they struggled to shove the first trunk into a corner of the compartment. By the time it was away, Dudley wasn’t sure they’d be able to move the second trunk at all. He and Harry were just standing, staring at it when a hand clapped down on Dudley’s shoulder. He jumped, and struggled to not punch whoever’d done it on the nose. 

“Need some help, mate?” The redheaded boy asked in a friendly enough tone. He was older than them by a few years at least, and familiar to Dudley for some reason. It was only as the the other, identical boy popped over his shoulder -- “Oi, George, you seen Lee’s spider?” -- that it finally clicked. They were the ones who’d dropped the sweets in the living room that year he’d been fourteen, that year when his mother had finally put her foot down about his diet. The sweets that had made him nearly choke on his own tongue --  _ because you’re a stupid, fat, pig, people were only trying to prevent you from being crushed under your own weight like a beached whale before you reached adulthood, and you can’t even keep your hands to yourself for five minutes, you’d only gotten what you’d deserved, they practically did you a favor, nearly offing you --  _

Dudley shook the thoughts from the forefront of his mind and shrugged the hand from his shoulder, making it look like a response. He was feeling a strange combination of fear and self consciousness towards these two. It was always like this when he met someone he’d known, before. Like he was half worried they’d remember and then call him out on the differences --  _ who do you think you are? You really think you’re fooling anybody with this act? _

“Yeah, that’d be great,” he said instead of giving in to the urge to recoil from them. “We’ve only barely gotten the first one up. You grab that end?” Dudley asked, trying to inject gratefulness into his tone as he grabbed one end. Harry scrambled to help him on his end, while the other twin joined George in snatching up the handles. 

It was only after they’d gotten both trunks stowed properly and Harry was yanking off his glasses in order to wipe the sweat from his face that the twins seemed to register the scar on his forehead, still on display with his fringe sticking straight up, spiked by sweat. 

“Blimey, are you --” 

“He  _ is _ ,” the other twin interjected. Dudley’d lost track of which one was George by now. “Aren’t you?” He asked Harry, something like awe in his tone.

“What?” Harry asked, squinting at them as he cleaned his glasses on his shirt. 

“ _ Harry Potter, _ ” They intoned as one. Dudley felt a shiver run down his back. When they’d been little, both times around, there’d been a few times when strange people in funny clothes had assaulted Harry for a handshake before darting back off into the ether, but Dudley’d never seen it like this. Didn’t they recognize that Harry was a child? That he’d wet the bed once when he was four and Dudley’d washed his sheets and pajamas in the sink so nobody’d find out? That he still wouldn’t eat peas if they came from a can because they were  _ mushy _ ? Dudley blinked over at Harry, who was rapidly flushing from the attention, and tried to disconnect himself enough in order to see what it was everyone saw when looking at him. He had a hard time looking past the jeans with a hole being worn in them where they dragged on the ground, and the smudge of dirt still on his glasses when he replaced them because he hadn’t washed his hands in god knows how long, and the green shirt Harry wore because Mary, who sat beside him, had once complimented him on it so he now wore it for all occasions on which he wanted to make a good impression, despite the fact that it had apparently escaped the last wash and was wrinkled and sweaty, now. He looked like every other eleven year old boy.

“I-- that, I mean, him, I mean,” Harry’s face was practically on fire now, “I mean, yes. I am.” Dudley noticed that at least some small part of Harry recognized it as a compliment, but on the whole Harry seemed to be looking for an escape.

“Yes, he is, and I’m Dudley, and at least one of you must be George, right? Only I’ve forgotten which.” Dudley interjected, stepping slightly in front of Harry and folding his arms across his chest. He might not be worth much in a fight against these two, at least a few years older and stockily built, but he’d remembered some of his boxing from college and had postured enough in his first lifetime to be able to inject some intimidation into his stance. One of the twins blinked, though, (George, he suspected) and glanced over at Harry scuffing his shoes on the pavement, and glanced at the other before they both broke out into wide grins. 

“Oh my god, Fred, it’s  _ Dudley _ !” The first one cried dramatically. 

“I can’t even tell you, Mr. Dudley, how  _ honored _ I am, I can’t even begin to say,” the other cut in, grabbing his hand and shaking it vigorously.

“Oh Fred, I feel faint!” the first one swooned against his twin. Dudley frowned at them, half grateful and half resentful that they’d turned their attentions to him. Beside him Harry’s shoulders had dropped a bit from where they’d come up around his ears. 

“Wow, Duddykins, never knew you were so famous,” Harry said with a grin. Something inside Dudley loosened.

“Shut up, you,” he said as he shoved off the twins and cuffed Harry lightly over the back of the head. 

Just then, a woman’s voice called over the general bustle. “Fred? George? Are you there?”

“Coming, mum!” they called in unison. With one last wink at Dudley, George and Fred leaped down past the stairs in a move that would surely have had some breaking an ankle. Harry gazed down after them. 

“C’mon, Harry, let’s go sit,” Dudley urged, tugging him into the seat and sitting down opposite him. Harry immediately plastered himself up against the half-open window. 

“Which sandwich did you want then?” Dudley asked, pulling them out and squinting down at the tiny, smeared script on the packaging. “I’ve got, let’s see, an egg and a tuna,” Dudley offered, already planning on picking the corn out of the tuna. Harry didn’t like the smell, and Dudley’d rather spend twenty minutes dodging sweetcorn than listening to Harry whine about tuna. 

When he didn’t get a response, he turned to glance out at whatever Harry was now hiding from. It was the redheaded family, familiar to Dudley in ways that made him feel dizzy. The little girl especially, now tugging on her mother’s sleeve -- “Oh please, mum, can’t I go and see--” reminded him of something beyond the summers spent hovering menacingly while his father had sneered down his nose at the family. An article, one from the funny paper he’d sometimes borrowed from the man always hanging around the coffee shop one of Dudley’s girlfriends had despised.  _ Finally, only months after his best friends, Rudolph and Harriet Westleby, nee Graham wed, Harry Potter has decided to give up his playboy lifestyle for one Miss Winny Westling, younger sister of Rudolph Westling --  _

The entire article had been mostly rubbish, the names laughably wrong and occasionally changing spellings, with scandalous connotations sprinkled throughout. But at the root of it, it was likely correct -- Harry had in fact been engaged, and his fiancee had in fact been a young, pretty redhead if the pictures of them holding hands and her ring were to be believed. Harry edged back up to the window slightly, his eyes following the little girl. Dudley snorted. Harry’d always been a sucker for girls with pretty hair.

Suddenly the whistle sounded and the three boys all allowed themselves to be pecked on the cheek by their mother as they clambered onto the train. Harry ducked back from the window again, and Dudley chucked the egg sandwich at him. Harry jumped slightly but looked back out the window after placing the sandwich onto the seat beside him. Dudley turned to the window and watched with Harry as the station pulled away from them, the little girl crying as she ran after the train. Dudley could hear her brothers calling after her. 

The train rounded a corner and the station gave way to the city gave way to houses flashing past. The compartment door opened. 

“Can-- Can I sit here?” the youngest redheaded boy asked. Dudley recognized him better than the rest -- this was the boy who’d be Harry’s best friend. Certainly more gangling and not quite as tall as Dudley remembered, but definitely the same boy. 

“Yeah, of course,” Dudley nodded to the seat beside Harry. The boy jumped and flushed as he finally took notice of Dudley. He’d obviously thought Harry’d be alone. 

“I -- no, I can go, sorry--” He attempted to back out.

“No, it’s fine!” Harry said cheerfully. Dudley wasn’t sure if it was the span of time that affected his memories, but he thought Harry had become much friendlier in their new lives. Though his standoffishness the first time around could very well have been a result of Dudley beating up anyone who dared talked to Harry.  _ You fat pig, can’t even be happy if you think anyone else is happy, you’ve never had a true friend in your entire life, only morons who can’t be bothered to try for anything real, just like you -- _

“I don’t think there are any empty compartments left at this point, you might as well just sit down.” Dudley kicked Harry to move his sandwich off the seat beside him. 

“Oh, uh, thanks.” the boy muttered awkwardly and shuffled into the sit. Dudley huffed and turned to look out the window and let them talk when the door to the compartment slammed open again, this time admitting the twins. 

“Hey, Ron, want to see Lee’s tarantula?” One grinned in a way that said he really doubted Ron would. “He’s only down a few compartments,” the other added as he popped his head in. 

“Yeah, not likely,” Ron mumbled, shrinking down in his seat. 

“Your loss,” the first twin shrugged, a grin still on his face. “I’m not certain we introduced ourselves properly earlier,” he said as he turned to Harry.

“Fred and George Weasley, and this is our brother, Ron,” the other cut in. 

“Pleasure,” Harry said brightly. “I’m Harry and that’s my cousin, Dudley,” he threw in. All the redheads in the compartment sent assessing glances over at Dudley. 

“See you later then,” the twins said before sliding the compartment door shut behind them. There was silence for a moment, then--

“Are you really Harry Potter?” Ron blurted out. Dudley rolled his eyes but huffed a laugh. Ron flushed and Harry sent Dudley a glare.

“Yeah, I am,” he said, and pushed his fringe back up before Ron could ask. “And no, I don’t remember it,” he added shrewdly, making Ron flush more deeply. He didn’t look away though.

“Wow,” he said in an awed tone, before glancing over at Dudley. “And you’re his cousin?”

Dudley rolled his eyes again. “Yes. Harry and I grew up together,” he said simply.

“So your brothers are twins? That’s cool, Dudley and I were always in the same year in school, but he’s a bit older,” Harry said excitedly.

“Yeah, and he spent two years trying to convince everyone that we were twins, even though we had different last names,” Dudley threw out, unable to resist. 

“It might have worked if you’d have just gone along with it for five minutes!” Harry returned.

“Oh yes, because don’t we just look so alike,” he replied, widening his eyes with false naivety at Ron, managing to shock a laugh out of him.

“You two couldn’t look less alike if you tried,” Ron said firmly. Harry laughed, taking the criticism in return for having Ron talk to him like a normal person.

“I don’t think we look  _ that _ different,” he said critically, but Ron and Dudley just snorted.

Dudley and Harry, even at roughly the same size, look pretty much as different as possible. Where Harry’s eyes were wide and green and almond shaped, Dudley's were round and watery blue and slightly too small and deeply set. Harry's hair was black as pitch and stuck straight out at strange angles, while Dudley's was blonde and thick and lay almost impossibly flat. Harry was built like a pipe cleaner with eyes, narrow nose and face and shoulders and hips and knobbly knees and not an inch of fat anywhere on him, while Dudley had broad shoulders and a square jaw and a snub nose.

Ron Dudley looked at each other and started laughing outright. 

“I don't understand what's so funny,” Harry said indignantly, but he was fighting a smile.

“So you grew up together, then? Cousins? Is it just the two of you?” Ron asked, relaxing back into his seat a little.

“Yeah, just us.” Harry grinned.

“Lucky,” Ron sighed. “I wish I’d had  _ just _ one brother.” Harry widened his eyes.

“Why? I wish I had three wizard brothers. That’d have been great,” Harry grinned. “Dudley and I didn’t know anything about magic before we got our letters.” 

“Weird,” Ron said, staring again. “My whole family are wizards. And try  _ five _ ,” he tacked on bemoaningly. “I’m practically the last in the family to go to Hogwarts. All except Ginny, except she’s the baby of the family and the only girl, so it doesn’t matter what she does. But Bill and Charlie -- they’re the oldest, they’ve already left -- Bill was the head boy and Charlie was quidditch captain, and now Percy’s been made prefect. And Fred and George, they mess around a lot, but they’re smart and funny and everybody likes them, and everyone expects me to do as well as all the others, only if I do it, it’s no big deal since they’ve done it first. And you never get anything new, see -- I’ve got Bill’s old robes, Charlie’s old wands, and Percy’s old rat.” As he spoke, he rummaged around in his pockets, pulling out a fat grey rat that appeared to be asleep. Or dead. 

“I wish I could have a pet. If I ever brought a rat into the house, I think my mother’d kill it,” Dudley said appreciatively, reaching out to stroke the limp creature on the head. He’d had a roommate in uni with a pet rats for a while, until he’d been kicked out for growing weed in the unused chem lab. Dudley quite liked them, actually, once he’d gotten past the tails. Ron snorted.

“His name’s scabbers,” he said, “And he’s completely useless. I’ve only gotten him because Percy got an owl for being made prefect,” Ron was looking a bit flushed around the ears though, and Dudley figured he was secretly pleased at the compliments.

“I’ve got an owl!” Harry said excitedly. “I only think Petunia lets me keep it because it was a present, though.” He added. “Can I hold him?” Harry asked, putting his hands out eagerly. Ron was quick to comply, dropping the fat rat into Harry’s cupped hands.

{That’s not a rat, you know.}

“Christ!” Dudley jumped. His shadow was looming in the seat beside him, oozing dark and cold into the air around it. 

“What?” Harry and Ron asked in unison, looking startled. Dudley stared at them blankly.

“Er, nothing, I -- I think something bit me,” he said, thinking quickly. Probably just a spider,” he added when they continued to stare at him. Ron immediately paled and lifted his feet from the compartment floor.

“I  _ hate _ spiders,” he said with a shudder. Harry just laughed. 

“I don’t mind them too much, as long as they don’t crawl into my mouth while I’m sleeping,” he said cheerfully. Ron looked a bit queasy at that.

“I’ll be right back,” Dudley said quietly, standing and sliding open the compartment door. The chatter continued behind him as his shadow bled into the corridor. Thankfully the corridor was nearly empty -- late enough that most people had already settled into a compartment, early enough that nobody had started to wander yet. He slid the compartment door shut behind him and took off down the corridor towards the end of the train. He ducked past a few other students laughing and calling to each other -- “ _ Excuse me, have you seen a toad anywhere? _ ” a girl called out to him as he passed, clutching a chubby, round faced boy by the wrist. He shook his head quickly and ducked into the door at the end of the train, which he hoped would lead to a lavatory.

Sure enough, a sink and toilet were stuffed into the small room -- larger than it should have been, mind, and suspiciously nice for a train toilet, but Dudley ignored that for the moment and locked the door behind him. He shuddered as his shadow crept in after him, weighing heavily against his back. 

“ _ What is happening? _ ” he hissed, for fear of being overheard by someone passing by. His shadow heaved itself onto the sink, looking strangely human. While something inside him recognized it as the girl from all those years ago, the one who’d sent him, all he could make out were great swaths of color where her limbs were meant to be, only vaguely resembling anything physical. Whenever he blinked she went smokey around the edges.

{I told you. You’d have to face it. And now you are.} Somehow it was hard to look directly at her.

“Yes, well, brilliant, that, but what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to deal with all this?” Dudley was feeling lightheaded, as all the worrying he’d been putting off seemed to come crashing down at once. For over a decade, now, he’d been living the same life he’d lived before -- excepting the small changes he’d made here and there, everything had gone as expected. Nothing had ever been new, not really. Just different versions of everything he’d already done before. Variations on a theme.

He had to sit on the toilet before his knees gave way.

{It isn’t a rat, you know,} the shadow informed him. He jumped when its foot knocked against his knee. If it even had feet. 

“Of course it’s an effing rat,” he said shakily, pulling his knees back and putting his head in his hands. He tried to ignore how it exposed the back of his neck to the shadow. She’d taken his this far, she wouldn’t just kill him for the hell of it.

{You need to look further, Dudley.} She scolded. {Nothing here is the same. And if I tell you it’s not a rat, you need to listen to me.} Dudley shivered at her tone.

“Yes, alright, fine, it’s not a bloody rat, it’s a pink polka-dotted gorilla, how could I have mistaken it for a rat,” he sniped back without raising his head.

{No, it’s not that either,} she said without emotion. {It’s a man.}

Dudley jerked his head up. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

{What it sounds like. It’s a man. People do that here, you know.” The shadow was swinging its legs idly with the motion of the train. {Become things they’re not.}

Dudley laughed drily. “Guess I’ll fit right the fuck in, then, won’t I?” 

{Yes,} the shadow said, its eyes growing darker and larger as it leaned forward, something like a grin twisting its features. {You’ll be perfect.} 


	10. Chapter 10

By the time Dudley finally got back to the compartment, a trolley had apparently been and gone. The only evidence of Harry’s sandwich was the empty package and there were a few sweet wrappers on the seat between him and Ron. 

“Where’d you go?” Harry asked around a mouthful of chocolate. 

“Nowhere,” Dudley said stupidly. “I mean, I was just looking around. You’ve not seen a toad around anywhere, have you?” He asked, struggling to come up with something to say and remembering the loud girl in the corridor. Ron rolled his eyes.

“No. They’ve already been ‘round to ask,” Harry explained. “Oh! And you should probably put on your robes,” he added. “We’ll be there soon.”

“Right,” Dudley said. He felt sick. “I’ll just be putting my robes on, then.”

* * *

“Firs’ years, over here!” The Giant man, the one with a pink umbrella who’d smashed down the door of the shack on the rock in the sea all those years ago, and given Dudley a pig’s tail that was painful to sit on and even more painful to have removed, and taken Harry away to this place. Dudley slipped in the mud as he stepped off the platform and very nearly took down a whole slew of eleven year olds with him.

“Ye alright there? Come along then!” The Giant called out to him, meeting Dudley’s eyes. Dudley froze for a long moment -- struck again with the sudden absurd fear that he’d been discovered -- before nodding mutely back and letting himself be shoved along down the narrow, steep path. Dudley kept his head down, pretending to concentrate on the path hidden by darkness until Harry grasped his arm tightly and a loud “ _ Oooooh! _ ” rang out from the surrounding children.

“Oh, Dudley, look at it,” Harry whispered excitedly, voice edging into a wistful sigh that Dudley had never heard from him before.

The path had opened onto a huge lake, the surface black and smooth as glass in the darkness, but that wasn’t what everyone was looking at. In the distance, atop a mountain was a huge castle, glittering in the dark as if its windows were filled with millions of candles. It was perfect -- the castle every child had in mind when they dreamed of being taken away for adventures in someplace extraordinary. Exactly the sort of place Dudley would have imagined, if he’d had any imagination as a child. Now, though, it looked like just the sort of place a horror movie took place in. The kinds where young women were married off to wealthy bachelors only to find bodies in locked away in the cellar, or where someone suddenly came into an unexpected inheritance only for them to find out the mansion was filled with murderous ghosts. The kinds of stories that never ended well.

Quickly Dudley was ushered into a rickety little boat, along with Harry and Ron and a girl with blonde pigtails, and then back out of it again once they’d passed into some sort of underground river. He had noticed that the boat, all the boats, had moved along at a nice clip seemingly of their own accord. Everything felt as if it was melting round the edges, like a lit candle, or an ice cube dropped into a cup of hot tea, each moment smudging into the next until it was all one big smear of sound and color and too many people packed too closely as they passed into some sort of underground tunnel and clambered back out of the boats. 

“Oi, you there! Is this your toad?” Hagrid called, and suddenly everything was  _ too _ clear, brilliant and shining in sharp relief even in the dim light as the round faced boy scrambled up to the front to claim his toad and they set off across the slippery grass. 

“Dudley, are you alright?” Harry asked as Dudley was nearly bent double with laughter edging into hysteria. 

“Yeah, Harry, I’m fine. I’m brilliant,” he returned with a grin so wide it hurt. Harry sent back a smile tinged with anxiety as they began up the castle steps. Dudley turned to face the front, pretending not to notice when Harry slipped his sweaty hand into Dudley’s. It was a habit Harry had outgrown a few years back, once he’d learned it was considered ‘uncool’ to be constantly hanging off Dudley, but apparently this new place and these new people were enough to overthrow the moratorium on all hand-holding. Dudley’s laughter subsided as he squeezed the clammy palm in return, and the great oak door swung open, casting them into light.

* * *

Ever since the letter had come, Dudley had had moments like this one -- moments where he thought to himself  _ this is it, this is your last chance, there’ll be no turning back after this, _ and each time he’d screwed his courage to the sticking place and forced himself to let it pass. They still kept coming, though -- when they’d gone to get their supplies, at the train station, when they’d reached the boats, and now, here, in the little room off the entrance hall with the loud girl from before nattering on under her breath about all the spells she knew and Ron nervously trying to reassure himself and Harry that his brothers had probably been joking about how painful the sorting was. As if when Professor McGonagall came back to retrieve them, Dudley could just raise his hand and say, “Hello, excuse me, see, I think there’s been a mistake, if I could just go and get back on the train and be out of everybody’s hair . . .”

Several screams erupted from the children around Dudley, yanking him forcefully from his thoughts. He jerked his head up to where the fingers were pointing, and saw dozens of ghosts serenely pouring into the room from the wall opposite, pearly white and slightly transparent and apparently deep in conversation. 

“-- I say, what are you all doing here?” One ghost broke off abruptly, peering down over the edge of his enormous ruff at the gathered students.

“First years,” Dudley bit out automatically, some sort of reflex left over from nearly two decades in primary school over the course of both his lives.  _ This is it, _ Dudley thought calmly.  _ I’ve finally gone insane. _ His brain was frozen, on autopilot -- nothing could surprise him now. 

“Oho!” The same ghost called excitedly. “About to be sorted, then? I suppose you’ll be in Gryffindor, my house, of course,” he winked down at Dudley. Gryffin-what? Dudley had already forgotten the majority of McGonagall’s speech from before. He swallowed.

“Move along now,” McGonagall’s voice rang out as she swept back into the room. “The Sorting Ceremony’s about to start.”

She swiftly herded them into a line, and out into the entrance hall and through the double doors into the Great Hall, a room the size of a cathedral and filled to the brim with floating candles and people and  _ sky _ . Dudley barely noticed anything else in light of the open night sky floating just out of reach, sparkling brightly with stars. He felt as if he was a breath away from floating out into the ether and disappearing from this place. 

Dudley snapped his head forward again as he felt Harry’s hand grasping the back of his robes, preventing him from crashing into the sandy-haired boy in front of him as they came to a stop. 

McGonagall was placing a ratty, pointed hat on a little four-legged stool before them, and there was only a moment of silent anxiety before the hand seemed to  _ move, _ and suddenly there was loud singing echoing forth. 

From the hat, Dudley realized,  _ because the effing hat was singing. _

Dudley felt as if his ears were ringing, drowning out the rusty voice, but his mind kept snagging on words here and there --  _ chivalry -- hufflepuff -- toil --  _ until the song ended and applause rang out from the four tables behind them.

McGonagall stepped forward with a long scroll in hand and began calling out -- names, Dudley realized,  _ yes she’d said that a moment ago, hadn’t she? _ \-- and he realized with a start as “Abbot _ ,  _ Hannah” and “Bones _ ,  _ Susan” were sorted off into Hufflepuff to encouraging cheers and “Boot, Terry” and “Brocklehurst, Mandy” into Ravenclaw to polite applause that the names were in alphabetical order.  

“Brown, Lavender” was shuffled off into Gryffindor to uproarious applause and friendly catcalls, and Dudley’s mind excused itself to go offline again as the next half-dozen or so names were called, until (far too early on for his comfort) --

“Dursley, Dudley,” McGonagall’s voice rang out. It was only with Harry’s encouraging slap on the back that Dudley remembered _ Oh right, that’s me _ \-- and managed to step forward. 

He ignored McGonagall’s pinched smile as he took his time making his way to the stool and settling himself onto it, still surprised, somehow, that his name had been called at all.

Suddenly it occurred to Dudley that if he was meant to be protecting Harry, and if he recalled right, he’d only really get to spend time with those in his own house, that perhaps he should know where it was Harry would be sorted.  _ Shit, _ he thought to himself as he dropped the hat onto his head,  _ something with red and yellow, right?  _ He scanned the tables desperately for the half-second it took the hat to fall over his eyes.

“Shit,” he whispered under his breath.  _ Shit, shit shit shit shit-- _

Sudden laughter in his ear broke off his inner dialogue.    
“Oh, you’ll do well,” the hat was saying around laughter, “You’ll be excellent.” Dudley’s ears burned. Why the fuck did everyone keep saying that? He’d never been brilliant at anything, ever. 

“Oh, don’t think that, you’ll be excellent,” the croaking voice in his ear reassured him. “Don’t worry, I don’t have any reason to stand in your way, so might as well be  _ GRYFFINDOR!” _

The last word rang out through the entire hall, and Dudley shakily doffed the hat to the cheers and cries erupting from the Gryffindor table -- the ones sporting red and gold ties, Dudley was relieved to see. 

He stepped off the platform, taking measured breaths. It was fine. It was all fine. 


	11. Chapter 11

Dudley’s brain quietly sputtered to a stop as the rest of the first years were sorted, including Harry, whose name elicited amazed silence followed by emphatic applause. Harry’s face was bright red as he quickly ducked in beside Dudley at the Gryffindor table, and Dudley absently gave him a congratulatory pat on the back before Harry was absorbed into the cheerful chatter of the rest of the table. Dudley wasn’t sure if he said a single thing for the rest of the night, watching the people at the table he’d been sorted into. They were young, fresh-faced, on the whole a good-looking group. Full of potential.  He looked back down to his plate, which had at some point obtained a covering of chicken and broccoli with sliced almonds. Dudley hated broccoli. And almonds. 

It wasn’t long before the exuberance of the group melted into a school song, which in turn bled into long, confusing corridors and turns and passages and staircases, and  _ moving portraits _ , before Dudley and the rest were safely stowed away in a cozy dorm, complete with lush four-poster beds and red velvet curtains. Dudley got himself tangled in his robes as he tried to extract himself from them, and was barely able to nod goodnight to Harry and kick off his trainers before he sank face-first into the mattress, and sleep.

* * *

In the middle of the night, Dudley woke to Harry crawling into his bed.

“Whassa matter?” he slurred blearily.

“Shh. Nothing. Nothing, I just . . . go back to sleep,” Harry hissed in the embarrassed tone of frightened eleven year old boys everywhere. Another nightmare, then.

Dudley rolled over and went back to sleep.

* * *

Dudley slept the rest of the night without dreaming and woke early to find his nigh perpetual companion hovering close to his face. Dudley groaned and yanked the covers over his head, but it was too late -- he was awake. He slid past the gloomy smear of shape and color and pulled back his curtains to find the dormitory still dark and quiet, save for muffled snores. Harry rolled over and buried his face in Dudley’s usurped pillow before settling back into sleep.

Dudley wandered until he found the bathroom, tucked away between the two beds opposite the staircase. He took the hottest, fastest shower he could manage, before getting redressed in the same clothes, his body still dripping wet. For some reason he felt hyper-exposed in this place, every draft that touched his neck sending shivers down his spine and bunching his shoulders up around his ears. 

By the time the rest of the boys in the dorm began stirring, Dudley had managed to discover his own trunk, somehow at the foot of his bed --  _ had it been there last night? How had they known where to put it, just between Harry and the boy he’d stood behind the night before? Could they read minds? Could they predict the future? Then what was he for? _ \-- and sorted his belongings either into the nightstand or into his schoolbag. 

“How long you been awake?” Harry yawned as he sat up in bed, his hair even more of a nightmare than usual. 

“A while,” Dudley said, thumbing through one of his new books for the first time. The few illustrations in the book flickered with independent movement as he flipped past them. The motion itched at the back of his mind, something from his first life he’d long forgotten -- a photo of Harry’s, tiny people waving furiously, like a television screen embedded in the page of the album filled with other such pictures.

“You might want to get a move on, I think breakfast will be over soon,” he said absently as Harry groped blindly at Dudley’s bedside table, obviously having forgotten his midnight relocation. 

“Here,” Dudley said, stretching across Harry’s bed to grab his glasses from the nightstand. 

“Thanks,” Harry mumbled as he took them. Dudley caught one of the other boys (a tall black boy he hadn’t remembered from the night before) glancing back and forth between them with a strange look on his face.

Dudley glared at him, but the boy just shrugged and went back to searching through his own trunk. 

“You’re cousins, right?” the round faced boy -- Trevor? -- said somewhat longingly. “That’s nice, to be at Hogwarts together. Nobody in my family is anywhere  _ near _ my age.” Dudley wondered if the boy knew his shirt was on inside out. 

“Yeah, I wish,” Ron said through a mouthful of toothpaste. He darted back into the bathroom to spit before continuing. “I’ve got three brothers here already. And next year my sister, too.” He made a face. Dudley hummed noncommittally. 

“Does anyone remember how to get to the Great Hall?” Dudley asked, slinging his bag over his shoulder and standing. “I’ve completely forgotten.”

“I think we can figure it out,” Harry said cheerfully as he pulled his shirt over his head. “Just give me a minute,” he added before disappearing into the bathroom. Dudley wondered what had made Harry so optimistic this time around. Not getting beaten up by Dudley and his lackeys every other week, probably. Dudley frowned down at his shoes.

“I’m going down to the common room,” he called to Harry, waiting just long enough to hear the muffled reply before taking off down the spiral staircase. He could feel himself sinking into one of his moods, where it got hard to listen to children and pretend to be one of them. The kind that would usually send him to his room, pretending to have a headache, but here he was stuck in a dorm with five boys, and no place to go to be alone. His chest was getting a little tight at the thought of it. 

Walking into the common room was stepping into the heart of a fire, all warm and red, strewn with overstuffed armchairs and spindly, lopsided tables. He sank into the loveseat in front of hearth and it was almost like he was actually relaxed for once. It was only a few minutes until Dudley heard Harry and the others clattering not down the steps, but already he felt simultaneously worlds better and as if his limbs had turned to cement, like they were melded to the cushion and he’d never be able to move again.  _ Maybe it won’t be so terrible here, _ a voice whispered in the back of his mind.  _ Maybe this will be okay _ .

“Dudley, you forgot your wand,” Harry said as he passed by, dropping the heavy stick in Dudley’s lap. 

{Forgot about that, didn’t you?} his shadow said from where it lounged by the remnants of last night’s fire.

_ Fuck you, _ Dudley hissed back in the privacy of his own mind. He had forgotten.

* * *

The other occupants of the castle were quick to take notice of Harry. Everywhere they went, hisses of “Is that him?”, and

“Next to the tall boy, with red hair,”

“The blonde one, with the ears?”

“No, idiot, the one with glasses.”

Dudley began to consider growing his hair out.

Harry seemed to be unsure of the attention. He’d often relished it back home, with Dudley or in his classes, but Harry didn’t seem to appreciate it here. He’d taken to pocketing his glasses in between classes, and had begun to develop a nervous tick of tugging on his fringe to make sure it covered his scar. It took him almost walking into the lake on the way to Herbology for him to finally relent and start wearing his glasses again. 

Dudley was facing his own problems, however. Just getting about the castle apparently took more magic than he’d thought he’d need in classes, let alone outside them. Sometimes the staircases (of which there were apparently an hundred and forty-two, Ron’s pompous older brother had informed them) tried to eat them, and the doors seemed to move around behind their backs. Sometimes they only opened on Tuesdays, or if you tickled them just right, or would get into a sulk and disappear completely. 

And then there were the classes themselves. Every class they walked into, they were expected to pull out their books and their wands. Dudley had tried to avoid touching his as much as was possible, but the teachers seemed to be trying to get them used to handling them, even if the classes started out mostly theoretical. Who knew magic would be so  _ boring _ . Unfortunately, they  _ were _ expected to start doing magic at some point. 

“Mr. Dursley, I do believe that your casting might significantly improve if you actually  _ held your wand _ ,” Professor McGonagall chastised him as she towered over his desk. They’d been given matchsticks to turn into needles, but seeing as no one else had managed to make any progress twenty minutes in, he’d figured he might be able to slide by without doing anything.

{You will need to try, eventually,} his shadow informed him as it leaned over his shoulder, leaking cold all over his back and making his head ache terribly. {You’re not really meant to have magic, you know, I’ve had to make all the connections for you in your mind. It’s not as easy as it sounds,} it insisted.

So Dudley picked up his wand, and squinted at the instructions that had written themselves neatly on the board, and coaxed his matchstick into a needle. He didn’t quite manage the eye properly, and on the whole it didn’t seem like needles were meant to look quite like that, but that could be chalked up to his lack of personal experience with needles.  

And the world didn’t end, and McGonagall’s suppressed smile didn’t feel entirely terrible, and he and Hermione Granger (the loud girl) had exchanged pleased glances when together they managed to earn five points for Gryffindor. 

But there were other classes to consider as well, such as Herbology (the text for which was going to give him nightmares, he was certain), and Charms (which Dudley actually didn’t mind, as they’d only done theory so far and the Professor was perpetually cheerful), and Astronomy (which required them to be up at midnight, and was both boring and familiar, as much of it seemed very similar to a class he’d taken at uni all those years ago because he’d mistakenly thought it would be easy), and Defense Against the Dark Arts (the Professor seemed rather pathetic, and Harry often complained that the smell of garlic that permeated the room gave him headaches). And Potions, of course, which the Weasley twins had horror stories about, but that they didn’t have until Friday -- a double session. The other first year boys whined whenever the subject came up, but Dudley had decided to reserve judgement on whether it was better to have to face a class several times a week, like Herbology, or just have at it all in one go and get it over with, like Potions.

Every morning the mail arrived, hundreds of owls swooping about and dropping letters on heads and laps (and occasionally into the porridge, like Ron’s family owl, Errol). Harry had nearly jumped out of his seat the first time it happened, but Dudley felt oddly calm about it all. The first time around, his parents had gone half mad with the way the letters had appeared, under the door and rolled up inside the eggs and shooting out of the fireplace by the dozen. By comparison, messenger birds seemed rather perfunctory.

Harry was the only first year in Gryffindor to have an owl, and the snowy bird came to visit every morning (for the bits of bacon Harry fed her, Dudley suspected -- that bird was going to die young, fat, and supremely happy), but never brought any mail. Dudley felt oddly guilty that he and Harry were the only ones who hadn’t received any word from relatives, as if it were his fault his parents were bigots, and even more so when he realized that Harry wouldn’t have received any the last time around, either. For all Ron’s complaining, he saved every letter his family sent him in nightstand, and Dean never opened his at the table but received them all the same (and Dudley had seen him staying up late, fretting over what to write to his mother and little sister), and Seamus read his aloud with great gusto, and even Neville seemed touched at the overly formal, haughty letters his various elderly relatives sent him in batches, all filled with conflicting advice and the kind of insults that only the elderly could get away with because they were too old to give a shit what anyone thought of their manners. Even those, though, Harry seemed to view with longing.

Friday morning, however, Hedwig dropped a letter onto Harry’s plate before swooping down to rest on Dudley’s shoulder and pick at his hair. He stiffened immediately, but tried very hard not to dislodge her. The bird seemed to sense his displeasure, though, and gave his ear a sharp nip before fluttering to the table. Harry unfolded to parchment and read for several minutes, not saying a word until Ron nudged him with his elbow.

“It’s . . . from Hagrid,” he said slowly before dropping the letter and ducking under the table for his bag. “Does anyone have a quill?” 

Ron passed one over and Harry scribbled a quick reply on the back of the parchment before sending Hedwig off with it.

“And who’s Hagrid?” Dudley asked in what he hoped was a nonchalant tone.

“You know, that huge man, from the boats,” Ron answered. “What’d he say, then?” 

“He knew my parents,” Harry said as he scraped at his empty plate with his spoon, making Dudley cringe at the sound. “He invited us over for tea, after class.” Dudley frowned, before necking the last of his tea and pushing back from the table.

“We should go if we don’t want to be late,” he said.

“Yeah,” Harry replied, still lost in his own head. “Okay.”

It wasn’t until Neville nearly knocked Harry down the stairs when he got caught in a trick step that Harry seemed to come back to them. Dudley tried, and failed, not to worry about what was going through Harry’s head.

{You might want to focus,} his shadow said, blending in with the gloom in the dungeons a bit too well for Dudley’s liking. {You’ll need to watch out for this one.} It had been giving similar such advice all week, though it never seemed to mean the same thing. 

_ What, another enemy?  _ He bit back, remembering the anxiety that had filled him for hours before meeting Professor Quirrell, only to decide that his personal cloud of misery must have developed a sense of humor. 

{No,} it said simply, slithering somewhat menacingly in the murkiness. {An ally, this time.}

_ Why do I need to watch out for an ally? _ he griped in his mind.

{You’ll understand when you meet him,} the shadow said -- flatly, the way it said everything. Dudley sighed. Fantastic.


	12. Chapter 12

“Don’ worry ‘bout Snape, he doesn’ like anybody.” 

Dudley tried not to look as stiff as he felt while Hagrid poured the tea. Harry was still a bit sore about their potions class. If Dudley remembered properly, Harry had been quite looking forward to that class over the summer, constantly skimming the class text and poking Dudley about what sorts of things he thought potions would be useful for. 

Snape had been horrid, but in the way some of Dudley’s “muggle” professors had been -- he’d learned that was the accepted term,  _ muggle _ , and that witches and wizards tended to not take kindly to him referring to them as the “normal people”. Snape wasn’t like McGonagall, who turned furniture and  _ people _ into various animals at the drop of a hat, or like Sprout, who seemed to think that murderous plants with faces were cute, or Binns, who was an  _ effing ghost _ . He’d been rude, and prejudiced, and an all-around foul git. But Dudley couldn’t deny the amount of relief he’d felt, following directions to the letter and doing nothing more magical than chop, dice, or mince -- which, he’d been taught the hard way, were all very different things, apparently. And in the end, it wasn’t terrible -- sure, he was a complete arse, and obviously had some sort of chip on his shoulder concerning Harry. But the entire class, the most magical thing that had happened was Neville’s potion melting through his cauldron -- and subsequently, onto the floor and through people’s shoes. Hell, Dudley’d been in chemistry classes in uni that had ended worse. At least no one had ended up naked in the emergency shower in front of all their classmates. 

Harry had been nervously ranting about the treatment since class let out, all the way to Hagrid’s hut. He obviously still held enough respect for teachers in general to feel somewhat guilty, but not enough to bottle it up entirely.

“Yeah, Fred and George have lost tons of points from him, he’s a complete git,” Ron jumped in, rubbing dog slobber off his ears. Hagrid’s dog (a massive blood hound ominously named Fang) had some sort of strange fascination with them. 

“Yeah, I guess,” Harry said in deference to Hagrid, fiddling with his tea mug, which was nearly the size of his head. They’d all been awkward around the adult in the room, but Hagrid was friendly enough, even if Dudley thought he might’ve found a toenail in the rock cakes they’d been served. 

“Anyways, yer father was jus’ the same, always gettin’ inta all sorts of trouble,” Hagrid said to Harry, moving to refill their mugs.

“You-you knew my parents?” Harry asked, as if this wasn't exactly what he'd been waiting for, a strange look on his face. Dudley ducked his head. He’d made sure that his parents hadn’t mistreated Harry, exactly, but he hadn’t been able to make them like him. Harry had always felt that his aunt and uncle hated him. Dudley felt secretly guilty, sometimes, thinking of that afternoon he’d seen Lily, exhausted and beautiful and soft-looking, watching an infant Harry so carefully. Like he’d stolen something from Harry by remembering, when Harry never would. 

“Sure, I did. Been here since before they was firs’ years, themselves!” Hagrid exclaimed, before jumping into a series of stories about Harry’s parents, and then after a bit, Ron’s parents, and then his brothers. Dudley just focused on disassembling his rock cake enough to make appear as if he’d eaten some.

When they finally left, near dark, Harry looked dazed with all he’d heard -- for years, practically all his life, he’d lived in a house where no one would even say his parents’ names, and then suddenly there was an adult who gave stories about them freely.

“We’ll come back, Harry,” Dudley promised, tugging on his sleeve. It was getting dark, dinner would be over soon.

“Yeah,” Harry said vaguely, staring back at the hut. “Okay.”

“Come on, then!” Ron yelled from just ahead of them. “I want to get some roast beef before it’s all gone.” Harry blinked before turning back to the castle.

“Yeah,” he said, seeming a bit more focused. “Yeah, I’m starving,” he added with a grin, jogging a few steps to catch up with Ron. Dudley shoved his hands in his pockets and followed after them.

{This is good,} his shadow promised him, swirling into being beside him. {This is what we want to happen.} The sunset was poking holes in it, brilliant orange light seeping through the cracks. Looking at it made Dudley’s head ache. For a moment he remembered the young woman it had once resembled, before it had molded into what it was now, indistinct and horrifying even in broad daylight. He looked away. 

“I’ll just take your word for it, then.”

* * *

The weeks passed quickly, more easily than Dudley would have imagined. Some small part of him still twisted at being constantly surrounded by everything he'd hated growing up, but the rest of him just . . . adjusted. He woke up, went to meals, spoke to classmates, went to classes and did his work. And if he laid awake for hours every night, watching his shadow leak and fade in the darkness, or flinched at loud noises, and sudden motions, or could barely stomach food -- well, that was just the way things were now. He was fine, and Harry was happy, even, and to be honest he just didn't quite give a shit about anyone else. So he adjusted.

He was, however, quickly realizing how much work actually went into this whole magic thing. The essays assigned for homework invoked a strange mix of relief and dread. When Professor Binns assigned a foot and a half of parchment on Broderick the Disemboweler, for example, Dudley had the perfect excuse to lock himself in the library and pretend he was too busy to try out magical games or candy with the other boys. Unfortunately he then had to actually write a foot and a half on someone named “Broderick the Disemboweler.” 

He and Neville seemed to be the only ones in the dorm who actually spent any time on schoolwork. Harry breezed through the essays easily and Ron didn’t seem to care enough about his grades to put forth anything more than minimal effort; the other boys in their dorm, Seamus and Dean, were thick as thieves within a day and got up to who knows what. 

Dudley, on the other hand, felt as if he spent most of his time in the library trying to get it all done. 

That was how Dudley ended up getting to know Hermione Granger, in the end. He’d taken to using the library as an escape from everything, and Hermione practically lived there, it seemed.

They'd built up a sort of silent camaraderie, sitting beside each other if they were at the library at the same time, exchanging pleasantries or bland jokes like middle aged office workers. It was both the most awkward relationship Dudley had ever been in and also somehow incredibly soothing. He didn’t have to fake anything around her. She was more like a tiny adult than an eleven year old most of the time, and seemed to welcome the company with a sort of desperation that spoke of years of friendlessness. They seemed to be the only first years still hovering around the periphery, not quite part of the student body just yet. Outsiders who'd somehow been caught in the middle of it all, as if they were there by accident. Sometimes Dudley wondered if she wasn't meant to be there, either. 

* * *

“Are you working on the essay for Potions or the one for History of Magic?” Dudley asked her as he slid into the seat across from her late one afternoon. Her hair was even bushier than usual from her tugging at it as she pored over the slim text in front of her. 

“Neither,” she replied without looking up. “I've already finished both.” She seemed somewhat stressed. 

“What's got you so tense, then?” He asked as he pulled out his parchment. “What are you reading?” He nodded to her book. 

“Nothing.” Her head whipped up as she slammed the book closed and folded her hands primly over the title. 

“Something dirty, then,” he decided, just to see the horror in her expression. “Didn't think you were the type, Hermione,” he added as he flipped open his potions text and kept his face as straight as possible.

Her face immediately went bright red. 

“I-- no, that's -- Dudley, you're disgusting!” She spluttered, practically throwing the book at him. He only barely managed to catch it before it hit him in the face. 

“I -- it's about flying,” she settled on, sliding back into her seat and smoothing her skirt nervously. She seemed to be avoiding his eyes. 

“What, like on a broom?” He asked. He may not have kept up much with what sorts of unnatural pastimes were most popular in the magical world, but it had been hard to miss the whole flying broomstick thing. He flipped to the contents section of the. The chapters were all titled things like ‘ _ 101 Things That Can and Will Go Wrong, _ ’ and ‘ _ The Importance of Maintaining a Proper Grip. _ ’ 

“This sounds like loads of fun,” he told her dryly, sliding the book back across the table. “I don't think that's the way to go about it, if you're wanting to learn. Not that I want to learn,” he said, turning back to his books. “Trains and cars are just fine for me, thanks.”

Some of the tension had leaked out Hermione’s shoulders at his declaration. 

“You don't want to learn? What about Quidditch?” She said edgily. 

“What the hell is Quidditch?” He asked, dipping his quill into the inkwell. “If God wanted me to fly, he’d have given me wings.”

Hermione seemed reluctantly amused at his declaration. “I suppose you’re not too excited about flying lessons, then, either,” she said. Dudley jerked his head up again.

“What?”

“Flying lessons, on Thursday. Required for all first years. Hadn’t you heard?”

Dudley groaned. 

* * *

Their flying lesson was to be shared with Slytherin, apparently -- by the time Dudley and the rest of the Gryffindor first years had made it to the field, there were already about a dozen students with green ties milling about the brooms laid out on the grass, each trying to pick out the best one.

“Do I look like I’m meant to fly?” Dudley grumbled to Hermione under his breath as Ron dived into yet another rendition of his hang-glider story. Dudley would have doubted its validity, if not for the fact that none of the other wizard-born students had any idea what hang-gliders were.

“You’re being ridiculous, I read that brooms are one of the safest forms of magical travel there is,” Hermione replied easily. For some reason his reluctance to fly seemed to have served to calm Hermione down about it all.

“What the hell kind of travel is available if flying through free air at tremendous heights on bundles of twigs is considered safe?” Dudley groused back. He’d never even been on a plane. He had never flown in all his life, and he didn’t see why he should start now, with brooms.

“My gran’s never let me near a broom,” Neville said morosely. “Said I was more likely to break my neck than anything else.” 

Dudley sighed and clapped the boy firmly on the shoulder. He often felt oddly sorry for Neville.

“I’ve never even touched a broom before,” Harry reassured Neville, cutting across Ron. “I’ll probably make a fool of myself, but at least we’ll be together?” He tried with a grin.

“You are sickeningly optimistic,” Dudley replied, picking across the field and trying to find the broom with the fewest twigs bending the wrong way. Harry just laughed cheerfully. It was truly obnoxious, how positive and upbeat Harry was most of the time. Dudley struggled to remember if Harry had always been that way, and simply reserved this attitude for times when Dudley and his friends weren’t beating him up, but he somehow doubted it.

“Come on, maybe if we all try hard enough we can ‘accidentally’ crash into Malfoy,” Harry grinned. Ron laughed and Hermione looked disapproving, but Neville just turned pale and shook his head.

“I don’t want to crash at all! Especially not into Malfoy!”

“Malfoy’s all talk, Neville, don't worry about him,” Dudley replied as he recalled the boy who tended to drop by Gryffindor table for the sole purpose of needling his classmates. Just that morning he'd been giving Neville shit about a package some well-meaning relative or another had sent him. Neville just made a nervous sort of noise, like a horse. 

Dudley shrugged as he inspected a particularly ratty broom, wondering if he might be excused from the lesson if his broom refused to fly. It would probably just explode instead, though, with his luck. 

“Well, what are you all waiting for?” the teacher, Madame Hooch, barked as she stepped onto the field and up between the two rows of broomsticks. She had short grey hair and eerie yellow eyes that glinted in the sun. “Everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up.” The first years quickly sorted themselves into two tidy rows, and Madame Hooch got about the business of teaching them how to fly. Apparently they needed to begin by commanding the brooms into their hands -- which Dudley decided was absolutely ridiculous, but so was practically everything about this place.

“Up? Up,  _ please _ ?” Neville was saying nervously on his right.

“You have to sound like you mean it, Neville,” Harry advised cheerfully -- his had lept into his hands the first chance it got. 

Dudley didn't think that was quite right either, though, as Hermione had been imperiously commanding her broomstick “Up. Up. Up,” since the beginning, and that did not appear to be working any better. 

“Up, you,” Dudley tried, but his broom just rolled over sluggishly. “This is bullshit,” he muttered under his breath. The broom swung up and whacked him in the shin. Ron laughed heartily, until his own broomstick began beating him about the head. 

Eventually everyone was situated properly, and Hooch had corrected their grips -- Hermione's was, predictably, textbook perfect, though Hooch had to remind her to loosen her grip more than once. Dudley could see her knuckles shining white as they prepared to take off.

“Now, on the count of three, I want you to kick off gently, hover for a few moments, and then touch back down. Ready? Three, two--  _ Mr _ .  _ Longbottom _ ! Come down at  _ once _ !”

But it was too late. Ten, twenty, thirty feet into the air -- Neville had shot up from the ground faster than if he’d been shot from a cannon, and he didn’t show any signs of slowing. Instead the broom began shaking, hard, and then Neville’s face turned white and he slipped off the broom. Dudley froze for half a second --  _ should I do something? Why isn't the teacher doing anything? He’ll die, but if I try to catch him I'll be crushed -- such a stupid, fat pig, too selfish to even try to do anything for anyone but yourself -- _

but then his shadow, having become nearly invisible in the bright sunlight and wide open stretch of grass, sprung into being and billowed about his body until he struggled to breath from the weight of it crushing down on him: {Hold your peace, Dudley, The boy will live,}

\-- and Neville was on the ground, still white as a sheet and clutching his wrist but seeming mostly intact. Madame Hooch was quick to get him to his feet and hurry him off into the castle, leaving the rest of them standing around in a state of shock. 

That was, until Malfoy and his goons began guffawing loudly.

“Did you see his face? What an idiot,” he snorted out. 

“Shut up,” Dudley grunted in his direction.

“Or what?” Malfoy grinned. “You’ll  _ make me? _ ” He might have continued, but something glinting in the grass caught his attention first. 

“It’s that stupid thing Longbottom’s grandmother sent him,” he said gleefully, snatching it up before any of the Gryffindors could. Harry glanced nervously between Dudley and Malfoy -- he’d been here before, he knew that Dudley was the one who dealt with bullies -- only then Malfoy was snatching up a broom, too, and before Dudley could work up the courage to follow his specter was near suffocating him and he couldn’t  _ think _ .

{Let Harry take care of this,} it commanded. {You’ll make him weak.} 

And before Dudley could quite suss out what that meant, Harry had snatched up a broom for himself and streaked after Malfoy with more ease than Dudley would have imagined. He suddenly recalled that Harry had returned from first year with a sleek looking broom in tow -- one that, according to the school rules, Harry never should have had. 

{Good boy,} the shadow pulled back a bit. {Some things you have to let happen.}

Dudley would have replied but the shadow’s presence was making his head throb. 

“He’s going to get us all expelled!” Hermione was screeching, part worried but mostly enraged. Dudley swung round to face her and the rest of the first years.

“Not if you all keep your mouths shut,” he threatened. The Slytherins’ eyes were quick to slide away from the scene, and the Gryffindors nodded hurriedly. No one here was eager to get themselves or anybody else in trouble. 

He turned back in time to see Malfoy landing nearby, and Harry streaking towards the ground after the glinting glass ball. Dudley kept his eyes on Harry long enough to make sure he wouldn’t break his neck, and then started towards Malfoy’s smug face.

“Wipe that smirk off,” Dudley told him.   
“I’d like to see a filthy little mudblood like you try,” he replied. Hermione gasped. 

Dudley was ready to haul off and punch him, but before he could, Professor McGonagall appeared and dragged Harry off the pitch, his face white with fear. He’d never really been in trouble -- it had always been Dudley, before, who’d broken the rules that were shit and gotten into fights with the idiots in their school. He briefly wondered if he should intervene -- there’d been something in McGonagall’s eyes, Harry wouldn’t be getting into much trouble -- but his specter was silent.

_ Everything is fine _ , Dudley reassured himself,  _ it’s all going accordingly. _

Malfoy’s face was gleeful. “He’s going to get expelled,” the little prat gloated.

“Shut up,” Dudley spit back, but Hermione began dragging him back up to the castle before anything could start.

“He’s not worth it, Dudley,” she half-begged him as she hauled him up the castle steps. 

“No,” Dudley allowed. “I suppose he isn’t.” 

{We’ll need him later, Dudley, he’ll be important,} the shadow was promising as it kept pace with them. Dudley didn’t bother to reply. His head was aching again.


	13. Chapter 13

And so Harry made the quidditch team, got a new broomstick, and left Malfoy (now firmly lodged in his position as Harry’s sworn enemy) seething with envy. 

“You lucky bastard,” was all Ron had to say on the matter, along with “Did you see the look on Malfoy’s face?”, once the broom had arrived. 

“Just don’t break your neck,” Dudley warmed Harry solemnly. Harry promised, but the grin on his face left Dudley a little wary.

“He should have been expelled,” Hermione said many, many times under her breath. Dudley just tried to ignore her.

* * *

By the end of October, they had already begun practical work in most of their classes, and Dudley had finally gotten past cringing whenever he had to touch his own wand. In fact, once he had gotten around to actually trying the spells, it was . . . fine. Easy, actually. Too easy, almost. Between the amount of time Dudley had been putting into his written work with Hermione in the library, and the ease with which he completed spells as a result of his specter, he was doing . . . decently, actually. Not failing, at least. For once in his life. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it just yet.

The one class they hadn’t started in on much practical work yet was Charms. Flitwick had spent several classes lecturing solely on the importance of spell safety before even allowing them to practice the spell motions and pronunciations without their wands in hand. Therefore everyone was excited when he announced Halloween morning that he thought they were finally ready to begin casting spells. 

Charms was definitely the showiest of all magic they would be learning -- they hadn’t reached a high enough level in transfiguration to do things like turning desks into pigs or become animagi, and in fact most of them would never reach that level. They never really got to see the results of the potions they brewed, and they didn’t exactly do much spellcasting in any of their other classes. But in charms, the first, simplest spell they would be learning was  _ levitation _ . Everyone was excited to get started.

Unfortunately, the students quickly realized it wouldn’t be as easy as they thought. By the end of class, most of the other first years had at least managed a weak hover for a few seconds, and only Harry, Hermione, Dudley, and Parvati Patil managed anything better. The only ones who performed worse than Ron had been Neville, who was generally useless, and Seamus, who came away from the lesson with singed eyebrows. Dudley could hear Ron ranting as they passed through the courtyard that led back to the main part of the castle. 

“Honestly, she’s a nightmare, it’s no wonder she hasn’t any friends!” He was saying loudly. Dudley felt Hermione tense beside him, and even as he felt the anger rising up inside --  _ you’re just like your father, the only real emotions you’ve ever had are confusion and anger -- _ his shadow burst into being in front of him. He swayed for a moment on his feet -- he’d begun to get pulsing headaches whenever his companion was near enough.

{You can’t do that, Dudley. You’ll ruin it,} it warned. 

_ Like I give a fuck, _ he sent back hotly before pushing past it. 

“Don’t be such a prick, Weasley,” He shouted back across the courtyard. Harry’s shoulders instantly jerked up around his ears, as if he’d been caught at something he was ashamed of.

Dudley spun back around and grabbed Hermione’s arm, tugging her past Ron and Harry.

“Maybe next time you could just fucking do the spell right,” he shot at Ron before dragging her around the corner. He should've just let it go. It wasn’t anything much, not really, and now his specter was pressing down on him and making it hard to move, like he’d been submerged in molasses. {You shouldn’t have done that, Dudley.}

What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he just keep his fat mouth shut? He hadn't gotten angry like that in ages. He hadn't felt that strongly about  _ anything _ in ages, except maybe his fear of the magical world -- though even that had manifested as a sort of sick numbness. He’d been nothing  _ but _ numb for months now. His breaths were catching in his throat with the pure act of feeling fucking anything -- or maybe that was his shadow, leaking filth and cold into the air around him.

It was keeping steady with him, muttering low in the back of his mind all the while, things like: {You shouldn’t have done that, Dudley,} and {you’ve changed it now,} and {You need to  _ listen to me _ .} It pressed in closer still and he swayed on his feet, his grip on Hermione’s arm loosening without his consent. She yanked it free, turning away from him. 

“I-- you shouldn’t have said anything-- they didn’t-- it’ll just be worse, now-- I could have handled it!” Hermione was gasping out. Crying, he realized suddenly. Or trying not to, he supposed. Everything was a little fuzzy just then.

“I’m sorry, Hermione, I know, but I couldn’t just let him . . .” he trailed off as his knees wavered. He had that shaky feeling swooping through him, the one that usually precipitated being violently ill. “I shouldn’t’ve said that, but neither should he,” he decided on. His specter loomed near. {I didn’t want to have to do this, Dudley, you’ve left me with no choice, I have to fix this.}

Hermione laughed, her voice low and choked with tears. “No, you shouldn’t have,” she agreed. She wiped her face before turning back to face him, her cheeks already swollen and red from her little crying jag. “You have such a filthy mouth,” she said primly, fighting a smile. 

“Yeah, I’m trying to quit,” he grinned back. His face felt like it was arranged wrong, his lips sticking to his teeth and his cheeks oddly numb.

“Are you alright?” she asked suddenly, stepping forward. “You look strange.”

At any other moment, Dudley would have lied, would have said he’d forgotten something, or that he was hungry or tired, but his stomach felt hot and tight and wrong, and his skull was buzzing. 

{You should have listened, Dudley. You need to learn control.}

“I just feel a bit sick,” he said instead. His shadow retreated a bit into the gloom, and his head began to clear. He took a few controlled breaths. It scared him a little, how natural it was to fall into calming breathing exercises lately. Practice makes perfect _,_ and all that _,_ he supposed. 

“Oh no,” Hermione’s face instantly fell, “We should go to the infirmary, then, here--” she was grabbing at his arm and he tried to straighten a bit. His stomach was settling now. 

“No, it’s fine. I think it passed,” he said, ignoring the twinge in his gut that lingered. He felt lightheaded. 

“Are you sure?” Hermione asked suspiciously, already back to being his best friend even with her face still pink and wet. “It’s strange that you would suddenly feel sick, are you sure you’re fine? I think perhaps we should still go to see Madame Pomfrey, just in case--”

“Hermione,” he cut her off. “I’m fine. Besides, we’ll be late for class if we don’t leave now.” Her face twisted up as she engaged in a fierce internal debate, but he knew he’d got her. Academics truly were her one weakness. 

“Fine,” she relented finally. “But at least let me carry your bag,” she said.

“Hermione, I swear,” he said solemnly, hand over his heart, “the second I start to feel sick I will let you be a gentleman and carry my bag.” It only lasted about a second before they were both giggling.

“Dudley, I’m glad you’re here,” she said as they started off down the corridor. 

“Me too,” Dudley said, surprised at the honesty of his answer. He  _ was _ glad he was here. 

For once he didn't notice as his specter swelled in the shadows. 

* * *

Dudley felt vaguely ill through the rest of their classes that day. The shadow at his back felt more present than usual, as if it was taking up more space, somehow. His head felt as if it was vibrating, buzzing across his skull and down the back of his neck. Like being in a club where the music so deep and so loud it was felt more than heard. After a while he wasn’t sure if he was dizzy because he felt so sick or if he just felt sick because of the way his head was spinning. 

Ron and Harry seemed reluctant to speak to him and Hermione through the rest of their joint classes -- Ron because he was offended and angry, and Harry because he was ashamed of siding with Ron earlier, but unsure that he would be able keep Ron as a friend if he sided with Dudley. Dudley was easy. He'd always been there. He’d be forced to forgive Harry eventually. Ron, however, was new and unpredictable.

Dudley noticed Harry trying to catch his eye repeatedly throughout the afternoon, but his head ached too much for him to respond meaningfully. The minute their classes were out, Dudley caught Hermione’s arm and muttered he was going to go back up to the dormitory. 

“But the feast!” Hermione said, surprised. “You really don’t feel well,” she added after a moment of searching his face. “Are you sure you don’t want to go see Madame Pomfrey?”

“It’s just a headache, Hermione, I’m fine. Tell Harry where I am if he asks. Tell him not to worry.” Dudley was having a hard time forming the words in his mouth. His insides felt like they’d been rearranged. 

He was grateful that everyone was filtering down to the Great Hall for the feast already as he stumbled on the stairs, clutching at his knees and squinting at the lights, afraid to close his eyes with the way the the world was tilting. He shuffled into the dorm, shedding his clothing and bag on the floor and crawling into bed. His head felt heavy.

No sooner was he curled under the covers than his shadow descended, melting out of the alcoves and converging all along his side, bleeding cold into the air. It felt hard to breath, his lungs choking on every breath. 

{I don’t like hurting you, Dudley,} it breathed down his neck. {You have to trust me. We have to do it right.} He didn’t bother replying, and after a moment he felt its weight pressing him down into the mattress, like a great cat had laid down on top of him, heavy and soft and suffocating.

{I know you know that Dudley. I know you understand. I know you’ll be good.} Dudley closed his eyes and didn’t speak.

* * *

In what felt like no time at all, hands were on him and shaking him awake. His specter was gone but he felt strange, like it had seeped into his skin and left its weight there with him.

“Dudley, Dudley wake up. What’s the matter with you? Did you hear, there was a troll,” Harry was chattering at him. His head throbbed at everything -- the noise, the light, the movement of air across his skin. 

“Leave off, I don’t feel well,” he groaned, pressing his face into his pillow. The shaking stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Harry said quietly. 

“Nothing. S’my head,” Dudley settled on. It didn’t hurt, exactly -- well, it did, but that wasn’t what was bothering him. It just felt . . . strange. Off balance, heavy, weighted wrong. He didn’t think he’d be able to sit upright without vomiting. 

“Oh.” Harry whispered. “Okay.” Harry was old hat at Dudley’s ‘headaches,’ those days when he couldn’t bring himself to pretend anymore and would crawl into bed and not leave it for anything. 

“Do you need anything?” Harry fussed, tugging the sheets into some semblance of order. “There's some food here, from the feast,” he wheedled. 

“No,” Dudley mumbled. “I just want t’sleep.” He felt the mattress dip, Harry’s hand ghosting over the back of his neck. 

“Okay,” he whispered. The weight shifted, and Dudley heard the scrape of the curtains being tugged closed. “I’ll let you sleep.”

The noise in the dorm faded a bit, but Dudley thought he could make out Harry’s hissing at the others to be quiet before everything melted into black. 

* * *

The night was filled with long stretches of sleep, broken up by nightmares of being alone in the dark and screaming but being unable to make a sound, of opening his eyes but not being able to see beyond vague shapes in the dark. Of the shadow swallowing him whole and being trapped within its belly, weightless and suffocating and impotent while Harry was led unknowingly to various unlikely deaths -- being paralyzed and eaten alive slowly by a snake, drowning in the bathtub, getting crushed beneath hundreds of falling feathers.  

Harry was back again in the morning, petting daintily at his head and shoulder, murmuring about breakfast and potions and Snape and the dratted troll again. Dudley moaned and rolled away from the touch. 

“S’okay,” Harry said soothingly after a pause. “I’ll . . . I’ll tell McGonagall you’re ill, okay? You can go back to sleep.” Dudley could hear the uncertainty in his voice, not knowing who to tell. If he even needed to tell anyone. He thought of saying something, of trying to get up, but his head ached abominably, and the curtains scraped closed before he could rally himself. 

{Don’t worry,} his specter melted into being, invisible and overwhelming in the gloom of the four poster. {It’s nothing. I had to do this. You’ll be fine. It’s all going according to plan.} Dudley kept his eyes closed and didn’t move, as if he played dead long enough the wraith would leave him be. {You should sleep,} it hissed, the sound scraping along the inside of his skull.

So he slept.

* * *

“Mr. Dursley.” Professor McGonagall’s sharp voice cut through his sleep. “Mr Potter has informed me that you are feeling under the weather.” He tried to open his eyes, but the lids felt heavy, swollen, and he wasn’t sure he managed it quite right. Everything was blurred in a halo of light. “Have you been to see Madame Pomfrey?” Her curt voice felt particularly harsh in that moment. He struggled to sit up, but he overbalanced. It took almost more willpower than he had in him to lift his head again from where it pressed into the covers.

“No.” his voice was rough. “S’just m’head,” he mumbled, finding it difficult to enunciate, “I get headaches, sometimes.” He was abruptly aware of the impression he was making, squinting at his head of house from the bed, in nothing but his trousers and a vest, begging off everyone’s least favorite class the morning after a feast with nothing more substantial than a headache. He actually liked McGonagall, a bit, in comparison to all the other nutters in charge here. It suddenly became very important to him that he was standing for this conversation.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sleep for so long-- I’ll get up now--” Dudley stood and black swam across his vision. All the blood rushed into his head at the same time, and it throbbed in great, spiking pains. His vision cleared after a moment and he realized he was on his knees, and McGonagall was speaking again.

“Mr. Dursley, are you quite alright? What’s wrong? Do you feel ill?” Dudley tried to rise, but suddenly his shadow was over him, jerking his head down sharply. His head pulsed again and he thought  _ for sure, this is the end, my head is going to explode.  _ He retched horribly, breathed for a few moments, and then was sick all over the floor. It splattered over his hands, seeped into the knees of his pants. 

“My  _ head, _ ” he moaned, before retching again, pathetically, an awful hiccuping sound. {You're doing splendidly. We can make them see what we want them to see,} his specter assured, it's weight still pressing down on him. He could feel McGonagall’s cool hands on him, one rubbing at his back and the other under his chest, steadying him. 

“That’s a good boy,” she was murmuring, “you’re alright. Let it out, now.” 

Dudley wanted to laugh at the thought of the stern professor down on the floor, soothing what she thought was a sick child, but the shadow was weighing him down and he let the black swallowed him.


	14. Chapter 14

_ Mr. Dursley? Dudley? Dudley can you hear me? _

Dudley groaned, trying to shove the hands away, but they kept gripping at him, trying to gain a response. His shadow slid around him, over him, squeezing him with its cold, weighty presence and making him shiver.  _ {wake up, Dudley. Tell them what I told you. About the man. The man who's a rat,} _ it demanded, but he couldn't. 

_ I can't, I can't, _ he tried to say. He was tired. He just wanted to sleep.  _ Make it stop.  _

_ {Dudley you must do as I say. Listen to me, Dudley-} _

But he was too tired. He tried to move but his limbs were too heavy; and then to speak but his throat was too dry. 

_ {you're weak, Dudley. Don't be weak. You need to do this.}  _

But the shadow was right. He was weak. That had always been who he was -- weak, sniveling,  **_you're disgusting, how can you stand to look at yourself, your parents are weak and you're even weaker, how can you even stand to be in your own skin--_ **

_ I can't,  _ Dudley reminded himself.  _ That's how we got ourselves here, remember? _

**_You're disgusting, you're weak, loathsome, wretched, repulsive, spineless, soft, impotent, vile--_ **

_ {we don't have time for this--} _

And the shadow slithered in, and told them about the rat that wasn't really a rat, because it was really a man -- a weak, despicable man, who'd done horrible things, and that he hadn't been the one to pay for them.

_ Just like me,  _ Dudley told the shadow from the corner of his mind he'd been caged in, barely able to feel his own tongue sliding over his teeth as the shadow told whoever was  listening about horrible things to come. 

_ {shut up. You need to listen to me. I have to do this, Dudley.} _

Dudley tried to console himself with this -- that it was for the greater good, that Harry will benefit from this, that the wraith knew what it was doing and would get them to where they needed to be in order to fix things. 

It was fine. It was all going to be fine. 

* * *

“Where am I?”

“In the hospital wing, dearie, you’ve been ill,” said Madame Pomfrey as she bustled towards him, fussing until he laid back down. “Here, down the hatchet -- that’s a good lad” she told him, handing him a flask of something fizzing and pink. It tasted the way he imagined toenails might.

“There we are. You’re doing just fine, you’ll be out of here by supper.”

“What happened?” Dudley asked, studiously not glancing to the corner he knew the shadow was lurking in. The memory of the suffocating cold made him feel ill, but he swallowed it back and focused on the present, where he was in a warm bed in a lit room, and the shadow had gone back into hiding. Part of him wanted to feel stupid for being afraid, but the rest of him knew he should be.

“--overtired, that’s all, I’m certain. Do you get headaches often, Dudley? Your cousin mentioned that you do,” Madame Pomfrey was saying. 

“Ah, yes,” Dudley said awkwardly as he realized she would be wanting a response.

“Not -- not like that, though,” he amended after a moment. Maybe he should tell them about the shadow. Maybe he was insane. Or possessed. They had magic, they could do something about that, couldn’t they?

“I’d hope not!” Madame Pomfrey replied, as a cart with a tray wheeled itself over to them. “Eat up.” 

It was breakfast, Dudley realized, but he wasn’t hungry. Hadn’t been hungry in a while, now. 

“When you’ve finished, Dudley, there’s someone here to see you,” the witch told him as she placed the tray in his lap, straightening the bedcovers. 

“Who?” Dudley asked, stabbing into the poached egg with his spoon. A sudden fear gripped him.  _ They didn’t call my parents, did they? _

“Oh, nobody to worry about. It's just that you can never be too careful about these sorts of things,” she replied, neatly sidestepping his question. 

“ _ What _ sorts of things?” He asked, abandoning his utensils, along with all pretense of eating. 

“She's a specialist, Dudley. Just to make sure you're in tip-top shape. Now eat your eggs,” she commanded before whisking the cart away. 

He thought about not eating. Thought about letting it all just . . . slide. The shadow could have his body. It knew what to do with it. Dudley shuddered as he remembered the feeling of it sliding around inside him, the way it had shifted and nestled perfectly into the rotting hole in his chest he'd never noticed before like it belonged there. Nobody would miss him, he suspected, and the wraith would get done the things that needed to get done. He should just die. That would be for the best, for everyone, really. 

_ Vile, foul, loathsome, weak little-- _

“What did I say? You need to keep up your strength, Mr. Dursley! Now  _ eat _ !” 

So Dudley ate. Because if there was one thing he's finally learned, it was to do as he was told. 

* * *

“Do you get headaches like this very often?”

“Do you recall anything you can't quite account for around the time these headaches occur?”

“Do you know what this is?”

“Do you feel anything when looking at this?” 

“Have you seen this before?”

“Do these symbols mean anything to you?”

The shadow weighed along his back, heavy and sickening. Dudley swallowed drily at every question that passed that he couldn't give any satisfactory answer to.

The woman brought out a yet another page of meaningless things that he didn't understand, and suddenly the shadow shifted. Dudley tensed. 

“Mr. Dursley? Are you alright? Do you sense anything?”

The shadow slid across his skin and layered itself over his fingers. It felt like he’d dipped his hand in icy water. It might have hurt, even, if he’d been aware enough to feel it. Before he realized it, his hand was moving.

“That one,” he said, brushing his finger over the symbol that looked like a crooked ‘z’, “and that one,” he added as the shadow kept moving, pointing to the bow tie, and then the wonky cross, and then the ticket stub and the diamond and the saxophone until --

“Enough,” the witch said, her voice sharp and her expression more intense than he'd seen it since she’d entered the room.

Dudley stilled, before carefully folding his hands between his knees. The shadow slid away like smoke. 

“I believe that's enough, Mr. Dursley,” she said calmly a moment later, smoothing an invisible crease out of her impeccable robes.

“We will be speaking shortly,” she informed him as she stood and began to replace every object she'd brought out back into the too-small case they'd come out of. Before Dudley could respond, she turned on her heel and was gone from the room.  

_ My hands are shaking _ , he registered dully on some level. Ever since he'd woken up, he felt like he'd been underwater. The world was still the world he'd left it, but . . . different, just slightly. Everything was smeary, and confusing, and harder than it should be. The grating exhaustion was the only thing that let him know he wasn't still asleep.

{Acceptable, Dudley,} the shadow informed him as it slid away from him. {I believe this will do nicely.} 

Dudley didn't say a thing.

* * *

“Dudley! Are you alright? You were so ill! I  _ told _ you you should have gone to the hospital wing!”

Dudley shrugged and gave Hermione a weak smile. He'd been released from the hospital wing after dinner late last night and hadn't had a chance to see anyone besides his dorm mates. Ron had been in a low mood and had gone straight to bed, but Neville and the others seemed happy to see him. Harry had fallen asleep in Dudley's bed again that night. 

“It's alright. I'm fine,” he told her. She huffed a little, but seemed too glad to see him again to really work herself up into a decent lecture. They were pruning roses in the greenhouse -- at least they looked like roses; Dudley had a sneaking suspicion that they were the source of the giggling he kept hearing whenever he looked away from them, but he hadn't been paying attention during the lesson so he couldn't be certain. He still felt disconnected from everything, like his mind was lagging a few seconds behind. 

He realized Hermione was watching him carefully and he scrambled to fill the silence. 

“What's wrong with Weasley?” He tried. Ron had been swearing loudly from the next table over since the class had paired off and begun working.

“His rat went missing over the weekend,” she told him, still clipping away. She was a little too enthusiastic with the pruning, he'd noticed. 

“He claims someone stole it, but I doubt it. Have you seen that rat? It's disgusting,” she continued, wrinkling her nose at the thought. 

“Maybe it was one of his brothers,” Dudley defended weakly. “They seem the type to do something just to get a rise out of him.” Hermione frowned and turned back to their plant. Dudley suddenly realized that she was the one doing most of the work and hurried to busy himself. 

“I don’t think so,” she said finally. “There’s something strange about it. I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

Dudley avoided looking her in the eye for the rest of the day.

* * *

“Are you sure you’re feeling alright? Do you want to go back to the infirmary? Maybe you should go rest for a little while,” Hermione wheedled. She’d noticed him acting strange on Monday, and by Wednesday was convinced there was something horribly wrong with him and he was just being stoic.

_ Like I would ever be stoic, _ Dudley thought derisively. _ Stupid, fat, spineless worm -- _

“What’s wrong? Are you still sick?” Harry interrupted his line of thought. “Is he still sick?” He turned to Hermione.

“He’s fine, Harry,” Ron grunted from where he’d been sculpting his pile of mashed potatoes with a spoon. He’d been in a foul mood since Dudley had gotten out of the hospital wing, but the loss of his rat had apparently superseded any grudge he might have been holding towards Dudley.

“Yes, he is fine,” he said firmly. Hermione looked like she wanted to press the issue, but Professor McGonagall interrupted before she could say anything. 

“Good evening, Miss Granger, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley. Mr. Dursley, if you’ll come with me,” she said succinctly.

“I’ll see you later,” he told them, trying to ignore how hard his heart was pounding.

“Where are we going?” he asked McGonagall as she led him out of the Great Hall. 

“To see Headmaster Dumbledore,” she replied. Dudley swallowed, hard.

“You’re not in trouble,” she added after seeing his face. “But he needs to speak to you, concerning a personal matter.” 

Dudley wanted to ask more questions; to get an idea of what he was about to walk into, but his thoughts were bouncing around the inside of his head so fast he couldn’t catch them.

“Toffee crisp,” McGonagall said suddenly, interrupting his thoughts. She had stopped before a large gargoyle hulking off to one side of the corridor. 

“What?” Dudley asked, feeling stupider by the minute, but before she could reply the gargoyle had leapt out of the way and bowed them into the hidden passage that had suddenly appeared behind it. 

“Up you go, Mr. Dursley,” McGonagall gestured him on up the cramped, spiraling stairwell. He nodded to her in thanks and stepped in. The gargoyle moved back into position, blocking his view of her. 

The second Dudley's foot hit the first step, his stomach lurched. He thought he was going to be sick before he realized that the staircase was moving. Before he could quite wrap his head around it, the stairwell slid to stop before a large, imposing door. 

He knocked lightly, as though maybe if the Headmaster didn't hear him, he'd be free to go. Unfortunately the door swung open at his touch, like it had been expecting him. 

“Come in, Dudley,” Dumbledore called from within. Dudley took a deep breath before stepping firmly over the threshold. 

“Fizzing whizbee?” The man offered a bowl of brightly colored sweets from where he stood beside the bookshelf. The room was lined with them, each holding hundreds of books that looked older than the headmaster, and strange and delicate instruments that all ticked away to their own rhythm. 

“Uhm, no. Thank you,” Dudley managed, squirming slightly under the man’s gaze, along with the gaze of at least a dozen of the portraits hanging in the study, all of them doing unconvincing jobs of pretending to doze. 

He'd been avoiding thinking about what had happened after Halloween, and the shadow had obliged him by keeping its distance. He suddenly found himself wishing he hadn't walled off those thoughts so efficiently however, because now there were going to be questions, ones that he didn't know the answers to. He remembered meeting Dumbledore, from Before. The man had seen right through to the heart of him back then. Who's to say he won't see the same thing now? Dudley hadn't changed, not really --  _ vile little cockroach, repulsive, squirming, little maggot, you'd be better off dead, spineless, weak-- _

As if sensing his doubts, the specter slithered into the room and up his back, settling across his shoulders like some great, soul-sucking house cat bleeding cold and fear into him. 

“Have a seat, Dudley,” the headmaster gestured and the plush armchair before his desk turned towards Dudley invitingly. He perched gingerly on the very edge and it slid him around to face the headmaster. He felt boxed in.

“I hear your lessons are going well, Dudley,” the man said congenially as he settled into the seat on the other side of the desk. Dudley shrugged. They weren't here to talk about his grades, of that much he was certain, and putting it off was only putting him further on edge. The Headmaster seemed to sense this. 

“You were taken ill recently, isn't that correct Dudley? Do you remember anything . . . strange?” Dudley repressed a derisive snort, but only barely. 

“I thought that's why that woman came,” he said, avoiding the answer. “To ask all those sorts of questions.” The Headmaster just smiled indulgently. 

“Yes, that was her purpose in coming here. Unfortunately she was a ministry employee, and despite my age and best efforts I have yet to gain the power of omniscience.” When Dudley didn't make any move to respond, the man pushed on. “Dudley, you said some things while you were ill. Do you remember this?” Dudley shrugged, because yes, he remembered, but it wasn't him saying those things. It was the shadow. 

“I know that this is all very new to you, Dudley, but there are some things about the wizarding world that you might find . . .applicable to your situation, as it were.” Dumbledore steepled his fingers and observed Dudley over the top of them. “There are many witches and wizards who have talents beyond their peers. For example, Professor McGonagall has the ability to turn into a cat -- this makes her someone known as an ‘animagus.’ This is a bit of very difficult transfiguration magic, and a skill that can be learned, if the witch or wizard in question has enough drive and dedication to learn. Every animagus has their own unique form, such as a dog, a bird, a rat.” Dumbledore paused slightly at this last point, watching Dudley carefully for any sign of recognition. Dudley began counting the tassels at the other end of the rug beneath his chair. 

“Others, the metamorphmagi, have the talent to change their appearance at will. This is a skill that can not be learned, but only inherited,” the headmaster continued. Dudley wondered what the man was getting at.  _ Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. _

“And still others, Dudley, have the power of knowledge. Their abilities vary widely, and are often unpredictable and miraculous in their range.” The headmaster paused again with purpose, but Dudley refused to look up.  _ Twenty-seven, twenty-eight. _ “Like the metamorphmagi, this is a skill that cannot be learned. Here, in the United Kingdom, we refer to these individuals as Seers.”

Dudley flinched, but didn't dare look up.  _ Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven. _

“Dudley, I need to know if you can recall anything from that night, anything at all,” Dumbledore stood and came around the desk, resting a hand on Dudley’s shoulder. He wondered absently how the man didn’t feel the affects of the shadow as it passed through him.

“Ron’s rat didn’t run away, did it,” he asked dully.

“No,” the man said simply, inclining his head.

“I don’t want to be locked away,” Dudley said abruptly, surprising even himself. He looked up finally, meeting Dumbledore’s eyes for the first time since he’d entered the office. Something too quiet to be real fear was stirring in his chest, but it was close enough. “I won’t be some government experiment.”

Dumbledore squeezed his shoulder lightly, sending warmth into Dudley’s arm. “Of course not, my boy. The ministry has its faults, as does any institution, of course, but they are not in the habit of experimenting on children.” He smiled reassuringly at Dudley, but it was the words themselves that loosened the tight, panicky feeling in his chest. This was the other part of being a child, he remembered suddenly, the part where people wanted to take care of you, the part where people looked at you and saw things like _innocence_ and _fragility_ and _potential_ instead of _weak_ and _spineless_ and _good-for-nothing._ The part where they felt the need to protect you. He’d missed out on that by and large, having been the one in their house in Little Whinging to take care of Harry and make excuses for his father and let his mother turn a blind eye. 

“What  _ will _ happen, then?” He asked, because he had to know.

“That is a very good question, dear boy. One that few men are capable of answering.” The Headmaster made his way back to his seat and settled into it, suddenly looking every inch the old man that he was. He smiled at Dudley again. 

“Fortunately for us, you might be one of them.”

Dudley swallowed back the feeling that was rising in his chest once again.

{This is what we wanted, Dudley. This is good,} the shadow reassured him. Dudley wondered if the thought of something like this occurring had ever even crossed his mind. He was certain that if it had, he had definitely not wished for it to happen. Not that it mattered what he wanted. Not anymore.

* * *

“What if I fall off my broom? Or get hit by a bludger and fall off my broom? Or try to catch the snitch and fall off my broom?” 

“Of course you won’t. Tell him he’s not going to fall off his broom, Dudley,” Ron said lazily, tilting his chair back at an angle that tempted Dudley to kick it out from under him.

“You’re not going to fall off your broom, Harry,” he grunted instead as he continued to check Ron’s charms homework against his own. Ron had cottoned on to the fact that Dudley and Hermione had been the top of the class since term had started, and though Dudley considered mentioning the fact that it was only the amount of studying he did that kept him there, he figured that Hermione lectured enough for the both of them. 

“I’ll make an idiot of myself,” Harry moaned into his arms. His first quidditch match was coming up fast and once Dudley was back in working order he hadn't had anything to distract him from his nerves. He’d been in extra practices almost every free hour the past few days, and Wood’s slightly manic motivational speeches hadn’t done anything to help. 

“It’s highly unlikely you’ll fall off your broom, Harry,” Hermione reassured him from her seat beside Dudley, where she was checking Harry’s homework. 

“You don’t know that,” Harry said despairingly. Ron let his chair drop back to the floor with a thunk, looking appalled at the thought that there was anything at all that Hermione didn’t know.

“Yes, I do,” she snapped, before diving for her bag. “Here, read this,” she commanded, sliding a book across the table a bit more forcefully than necessary. 

“Ouch,” Harry whined when it hit his elbow, but he sat up and flipped the book open, scanning the introduction. Dudley recognized the book as one of the many Hermione had sped through in the days leading up to their first flying lesson.

“ _ Quidditch Through the Ages _ ,” Ron read over Harry’s shoulder. “I think I’ve seen Charlie reading that. He was seeker, you know, before he graduated, and I don’t think he ever fell off his broom. Not during a game, at least,” he told Harry in a tone he probably thought was reassuring.

“Here, that’s you done,” Dudley cut in, pushing Ron’s liberally marked paper over to him before he could say anything else, like ‘he only lost one finger,’ or ‘he may have been knocked unconscious seven times, but he turned out fine.’

“How is that wrong?” Ron demanded as he flipped it over. “I copied that one from Hermione!”

“ _ Hey! _ ” Hermione interjected angrily. “I  _ knew _ you weren’t admiring my handwriting--”

“You’ve spelled it wrong,” Dudley said over Hermione’s indignant huffing.

“Spelled  _ what _ wro- oh,” Ron said, peering closer at Dudley’s notes along the side. “What about this one, then--”

“ _ Out! _ ” Someone suddenly screeched in Dudley’s ear. “Out of my library!”

“ _ Christ, _ fine,” Dudley muttered, shoving papers into his bag. Madame Pince had grown less tolerant of his and Hermione’s quiet conversations since Harry and Ron had started joining them after Halloween. 

Hermione began apologizing emphatically, panicked at the thought of being cut off from the library and its first-editions, but Madame Pince was firm and soon enough they were back in the stuffy, overfilled Gryffindor dorms. It had grown frigid over the past week, and most students were driven indoors by the low temperatures. It hadn’t been so bad over the past few evenings, but by Friday afternoon everyone was restless and the common room was overflowing with noisy students. 

“We could go outside,” Ron suggested half heartedly. 

“It's freezing, I was outside all morning with Wood,” Harry replied. Hermione glanced around furtively before responding. 

“I’ve got an idea for that, actually,” she said in low tones. “Come on.”

Interest piqued by her secretive behavior the others followed her, and within the half-hour they were standing quite comfortably around a little jar filled with blue flames that gave off an impressive amount of heat.

“I take back everything I’ve ever said against you Hermione, you’re absolutely brilliant,” Ron sighed appreciatively, bumping shoulders with Harry in an attempt to get closer to the heat source. Dudley noticed Hermione flush as she ducked further into the book she’d brought along.

“Thank you, Ronald,” she responded stiffly, “I suppose you might not be completely useless, either.” 

“Oi!” Ron protested lazily, too comfortable to become truly agitated. Dudley hid a grin in his scarf as he checked another box on the scrap of parchment he and Ron were using to play noughts and crosses against Harry’s back. 

“What would be considered an  _ excessive _ use of elbows?” Harry asked absently without looking up from his new book. “Like, is it allowed if you only use one elbow? Or, maybe if you don’t aim for the face?” 

“I think as long as they’re not as pointy as yours,” Dudley replied. Harry elbowed him right between the shoulder blades without bothering to turn away from the embrasure they’d tucked the jar into. 

“You’re only proving my point,” Dudley complained weakly as Ron defeated him for the third time in a row. He was feeling oddly content. He’d been worried about the repercussions of his conversation with Dumbledore, but so far he hadn’t heard a thing about his supposed abilities from anyone, not even the woman from the ministry. He’d tried briefly to scrounge up the effort to care about why Dumbledore was keeping it quiet, but he’d long learned the value of putting such thoughts out of his mind for as long as possible.

Dudley looked up when Ron cursed quietly under his breath, scooching even further towards Harry and jostling him into Dudley’s side -- to block the view of the fire, he realized. Snape was crossing the courtyard with a heavy limp, scowl firmly in place.

“Dursley!” He snapped when he spotted them. Dudley slid to the side a bit to allow Ron and Harry to hide the fire better. 

“What’s that you’ve got there, Potter?” The man said once he’d limped over. 

“A book, sir,” Harry replied quickly, his tone just shy of insolence. Dudley was quick to intervene. 

“Was there something you wanted, sir?” He cut in. Snape narrowed his eyes but allowed the interruption. 

“You need to make up the potion from the class you missed. Come to my office tomorrow morning.”

“But he’ll miss the quidditch match!” Harry said despondently.

“A pity, to be sure,” the man sneered. “Tomorrow, Dursley, eight o’clock, or I’ll see you scrubbing cauldrons for a month.

“Yes sir,” Dudley told him, head down. He hadn’t been excited to see the match, not exactly. But Harry had wanted him there. 

The man sneered once more before turning on his heel and stalking away, as much as one can stalk with a limp. 

“Slimy git,” Ron said emphatically once he’d gone. “Wonder what happened to his leg?”

{Things are progressing faster than anticipated,} the shadow told Dudley, gushing out of the cracks in the stonework and into being from behind him. He shivered at the sudden loss of warmth.

“Dunno,” Dudley said to Ron. “Let’s head back in. I’m freezing.”

{You can’t ignore things forever, Dudley,} it hissed at his back.

_ I know, _ Dudley wanted to say, but then Hermione was wrapping the little jar in his scarf and pressing it into his hands, and Ron was tucking Dudley under his arm and Harry plastered himself all along one side and together they hustled him back into the relative warmth of the castle.

_ Maybe I can _ , he thought.  _ Just for a little bit. _


	15. Chapter 15

“He's horrible. He did this on purpose. Can't you go to Professor McGonagall? She's fair,” Harry grumbled to Dudley as he pierced the yolk of his eggs with a fork. He had yet to actually put anything in his mouth, but with the way he was curled around his stomach Dudley supposed that nerves about the match were putting him off eating. 

“He's not doing it on purpose, Harry. He can't have planned me getting ill,” Dudley replied, purposefully sliding the bacon closer to Harry in the hopes he might actually eat something before going off to fly through the air catching midges and dodging blubbers, or whatever. 

Dudley might not have been paying very close attention when the sport had been explained to him. 

“Besides,” he added, “McGonagall is  _ very _ fair, which is exactly why she would never talk to Snape for me. That would be favoritism, Harry.”

“Well spoken, Mr. Dursley,” the witch in question said curtly from just behind him, making them jump. “Despite all appearances, Professor Snape is as reluctant to miss this match as you are. Responsibilities dictate his actions, as they should your own, Mr. Dursley.” Dudley felt his ears burn. She had probably swung by the table to make sure he wasn't planning to try and escape the morning lesson. 

“Good luck on the match, Potter,” she added before continuing on to the head table. 

“I suppose that's my cue, then,” Dudley sighed as he rose, glancing at his watch. It was nearly a quarter till. “Good luck,” he told Harry as he gathered his bag. “Just . . .” He paused for a moment, casting about for something to say that would strike the right balance between ‘relax, you'll be fine,’ and ‘please don't get yourself killed.’

“Don't do anything stupid,” he decided on, tugging lightly on the tuft at the back of Harry's head that always stood straight up. Harry seemed to understand the underlying sentiment, and gave Dudley a quick grin. 

“Don't get eaten by Snape,” he replied. Dudley huffed a short laugh before making his way out of the Great Hall and down to the dungeons. By the time he got there, there were only three minutes to spare. 

“In,” Snape called sharply before Dudley had even knocked. He hastened to obey. 

“Sit there,” the man gestured to the desk just before him without looking up. There was a sheet of parchment laid out, but no cauldron or ingredients, no instructions on the blackboard. Snape seemed to sense his hesitation. 

“Dumbledore has requested your presence this morning,” the man said, his tone suggesting that he, personally, would rather lick pond scum than spend one moment more than strictly necessary in Dudley’s presence. “Write out the instructions for brewing a proper wart-removal potion and you may proceed to his office.”

Dudley nodded quickly, trying not to show his dread at facing the headmaster again. Dumbledore put him on edge in ways no one ever had before. He wasn't even sure what, precisely, he was afraid of, but every time he saw the man now he felt like the bottom of his stomach had dropped out. 

Dudley struggled to remember the ingredients the potion required, let alone the order in which they were added, but within half an hour he'd given up caring. 

“Out,” Snape ordered as Dudley hesitantly stood and approached the front of the room. He didn't waste any time in dropping the sheet of parchment on the desk and making his way back out of the dungeons. 

It was only when he reached the great hall and still hasn't heard Snape heading out towards the quidditch pitch (where the game had only just started) that Dudley realized Dumbledore had planned this. He wanted to talk to Dudley, alone, and he didn't want Harry to know about it. He scowled as he made his way towards the gargoyle that guarded the Headmaster’s office. 

He didn't even have time to wonder how he was supposed to get past it when it jumped out of the way of its own accord. Dudley glanced at it warily as he passed, but it waited until he was firmly on the spiral staircase before moving back into position. 

“Ah, Dudley my boy, come in,” Dumbledore called from his position by the window. “Licorice snap?” He offered lightly. 

“No, thank you,” Dudley replied a bit more tartly than he'd meant to. 

“I do apologize that you are missing Mr. Potter’s first match. As I understand it, you are quite fond of one another.” 

Dudley ducked his head and shrugged at the supposition. The man had a way of making him feel ridiculous and childish, like he'd done something foolish and was only managing to save face at the Headmaster’s mercy. 

“I have a bit of news that concerns young Harry, and yourself, of course. The matter of Mr. Pettigrew’s miraculous discovery has had much farther reaching consequences than I had anticipated.”

Dudley could sense the shadow stirring behind him, stealing slowly across the ancient carpet that took up much of the floor space. It was a struggle not to squirm beneath the combined focus of the headmaster and his specter. 

“Dudley, do you know whether you and Harry might be returning to Privet Drive for the holidays?” Dumbledore said somewhat abruptly. 

“Oh,” Dudley replied, startled. “Well,” he added after a moment. He and Harry hadn't discussed it. He hadn't even been certain it was an option -- after all, he'd never seen Harry except for a few short weeks every summer. For all he knew wizards didn't even observe Christian holidays. He thought of the way his father had been absent for most of the summer, the way his mother had avoided looking at him and was constantly pale and twitchy. How they hadn't said a single word to Harry the entire time, and Dudley wanted to think it was a good thing but really he knew it was just more pressure building up and waiting to explode out of them in the worst way.

“No,” he finished finally. 

“That may be for the best, after all,” the headmaster sighed. “Do you know why no one ever looked for Mr. Pettigrew, Dudley? If he had done so many terrible things, why no one wondered at his sudden and convenient death?”

_ General incompetence, _ Dudley wanted to say, but he held his tongue. He shrugged. 

“There was a man convicted of those crimes. A man who was innocent, I'm afraid.” He gave Dudley a look full of intent at this, but he didn't follow. What did any of this have to do with Harry?

“Is Harry happy in your home, Dudley?” The headmaster spoke, abruptly changing tack yet again. Dudley felt a spike of frustration at the headmaster’s inability to complete a thought but beat it back. 

“ _ Yes _ ,” he ground out, knowing even as he said it that it was a lie. Harry was . . . fine, in their home. Healthy and provided for, certainly. But happy? Dudley honestly couldn't say. He'd stayed up more nights than he could count, lying wide awake wondering if Harry was alright, if he could sense how much the Dursleys despised him, if he hated them right back. If he was  _ really _ fine, even after all the shit Dudley'd put him through --  _ that never happened here, that's not me anymore, that was another lifetime. Stupid, weak, spineless -- _

Dudley glanced up to find Dumbledore smiling at him. 

“Young Harry seems to admire you quite a bit, Dudley. Did you know that?” Dudley shrugged and ducked his head again, because the man was just saying it to get what he wanted. It wasn't true. It couldn't be. He would know if it was, wouldn't he?

_ Pathetic, disgusting, sniveling little worm-- _

“The man who was, quite unfortunately, locked away for the crimes of Mr. Pettigrew has been scheduled for release. This  _ will _ become a matter of public knowledge very shortly. You see, Dudley, this man is the one who would have raised Harry, had he not been incarcerated. He will most certainly want to meet Harry, to speak to him. He would have every right. He may even attempt to take custody of Harry away from your parents, and as you may or may not know --”

“That can't happen,” Dudley interrupted, and he wasn't sure if the way his heart was pounding had more to do with the words the headmaster had spoken or the way the specter had crawled up his spine to hiss in his ear. “There's -- I know he has to stay at our house,” Dudley continued. “I don't really get it, but he can't leave, right? He has to stay,” it was getting difficult to speak around his panicked breaths. “He's safe there. Not anywhere else. With us.”  _ With me,  _ he wanted to add, but he knew it wasn't true. He was worthless. He didn't mean anything, beyond what his shadow intended for him. 

“So you do know,” the headmaster said, easing himself into his chair and relaxing back into it in a way that spoke of both relief and weariness. “I had wondered, of course. Your talent is commendable, Dudley.” He sighed, stroking his fingers before him. 

“I  _ can  _ count on you in this matter, can't I, Dudley?”

Dudley didn't need to shadow digging its fingers into his throat to know the answer. 

“Yes,” Dudley said firmly. 

“Though your presence in this school had been somewhat unanticipated, Mr. Dursley, I have to say I am glad that Harry will have you by his side in the difficulties he will face.” The headmaster gave him a small smile, more genuine than any of the others he'd seen from the man. 

_ Spineless worm, selfish pig, worthless piece of shit -- _

“I'll do what I can,” Dudley settled for.

“That is all I can ask,” Dumbledore replied.

* * *

It was chaos in the Gryffindor common room by the time Dudley got back. 

“We won, then?” He asked one of the Weasley twins as he passed by with a drink in each hand, face still pink and red hair spiked up with sweat from the match. 

“Course we did!” He chirped, slapping Dudley firmly on the shoulder before spinning back into the crowd. 

Dudley easily spotted Harry near the hearth, surrounded by friends and admirers. Even Hermione was clutching a butterbeer and looking reluctantly cheerful. He began to push his way through the crowd to congratulate him, to talk to his friends, to  _ be normal _ \-- but somehow he ended up by the stairs leading to the boys dorm instead, and then suddenly all he could think of was his bed waiting for him. He felt tired. Worn down. 

He had only just made it back to his bed and managed to flop face down into it when he heard someone else come clattering into the room. 

“Dudley!” Harry yelled as he jumped onto Dudley's bed, bouncing them both up off the mattress before they settled again.

“Dudley, it was  _ brilliant _ , you won't believe, I caught the snitch and everything, and somebody tried to put a curse on my broom, but Hermione stopped it so it was alright, and she said it was Quirrel but Ron said --”

“Professor Quirrel,” Dudley automatically corrected, and then -- “Wait, what?”

“I caught the snitch!” Harry crowed gleefully. 

“No, I heard that bit,” Dudley said, pushing himself up onto his knees. “Did you say someone tried to curse your broom? Did you tell anybody?” 

Harry frowned at him. “Ron and Hermione. And Hagrid. And you, now.”

“Harry, you have to tell someone! Not--” he cut Harry off as he opened his mouth again -- “not  _ me _ , or your friends. A teacher! Somebody who can  _ do _ something about it!”

“I really don't see why it's such a big deal,” he huffed at Dudley, crossing his arms. “I'm fine. Nothing happened.”

“ _ Nothing _ \-- Harry, that's not normal! It's not okay!” He said, his voice raised. His mind was flashing through the abuse seminars his school had held, remembering the people earnestly telling the students  _ it's not okay to be treated this way, don't be afraid to acknowledge that the way you're being treated is wrong _ and knowing he wasn't the victim, he'd never been the victim, he was the one who’d done bad things, who deserved to go to jail, who was  _ no better than trash, you deserve to die scared and alone and knowing exactly how disgusted people are by you -- _

“It's not okay for people to treat you that way. To treat anyone that way,” he breathed, hiding the way his hands were shaking. “You tell an adult when something like that happens. I don’t care who did it, or  _ why _ they did it, or how it happened. It isn’t--” He took a deep breath. “It’s not okay. And you should get help. From an adult.”

And then Harry looked at him with wide eyes, opened his mouth, because they both knew that that wasn’t how things were at all. Because Dudley still wouldn’t leave Harry alone in the house with Vernon, and the scar just under his left eye (from the last time Vernon had lost his temper) was still pink, not yet faded even after several months. 

“This is different,” Dudley cut Harry off, avoiding his eyes. “It’s different here. WIth you. These people don’t get to touch you.”

Dudley thought Harry might’ve had something to say, but he laid back down and pulled the covers over his head, and when he next emerged, it was morning, and Ron was crowing about some convict in the papers, one who’d been released on false charges after ten years. Sirius Black.


	16. Chapter 16

“Sirius Black?” Dean Thomas asked over his bowl of porridge. “Who’s that?”

“Some psycho evil killer,” Seamus was filling him in. “Murdered a ton of muggles, and stuff. Blew them up.”

“No, he didn’t, not according to this,” Hermione informed them somewhat condescendingly without even bothering to look up from the paper she was reading. “He didn’t even get a trial, can you imagine? Ten years. In  _ Azkaban _ . Ten  _ years _ and he never even got a trial.” 

Something was itching at the back of Dudley’s mind. The shadow, ever at his back, was silent.

“S’horrid,” Neville replied with a full-bodied shudder. 

“What’s Asky-ben, then?” Harry prodded Hermione with his elbow. “Azkaban,” she corrected absently.

Harry had sat himself on Hermione’s other side, instead of in his usual place beside Ron. Dudley tried not to think about the fact that he’d probably done it so he wouldn't have to look at Dudley.

_ Stupid, fat, useless, thinking anyone could ever care about you–  _

“Wizard’s Prison,” Ron informed around a mouthful of egg on toast. “S’posed to be awful. Loads of Dementors.”

Dudley felt ill.

“I’m going to class now,” he announced abruptly, jerking back from the table. 

“It’s Sunday, Dudley,” Ron said, giving him a weird look.

“Are you alright?” Hermione asked him, finally looking up from her copy of the  _ Prophet _ . “You look strange.”

“I’m fine,” Dudley bit out. Harry was looking at him for the first time that morning, looking like he was finally about to open his fat mouth and say something. “I didn’t mean class, I meant . . . I just forgot. There’s something I wanted to ask Professor McGonagall about the homework.” 

“Oh!” Hermione said brightly. “Wait a moment, I’ll come with you! I came across something the other day in my reading I wanted to ask her about, I’ll just be a moment –”

Dudley thought of his insides turning cold, of being in alone dark alleys – or worse, with somebody who you knew should never save you but probably will because they’re not a complete sack of  _ shit _ like you – and of something you couldn’t see choking you with fear, with the knowledge of exactly what you are inside and how horrific every moment was going to be from then on, knowing what you are, knowing how bad it would be, feeling the way your skin would crawl at the very thought of yourself.

He wanted to be alone. 

He probably shouldn’t be alone. 

“Okay,” he said, watching as Hermione dove under the table, rummaging around for the book bag that was perpetually slung over her shoulder. “Okay.”

“I mean, s’good that he’s out, though,” Ron said as he turned back to Harry. “You think you'd want to meet him? I mean, I’d expect he’s gone a bit ‘round the bend, but he’s still your godfather, isn't he.”

“What?” Harry yelped, tearing his eyes away from Dudley. “What are you talking about?”

“He's your godfather. Didn't you know?” Hermione asked, surprised. She had finally managed to unearth her book bag from under the bench. “It's all over the papers. I’d assumed it was public knowledge,” she told him as she heaved the bag onto her shoulder. Dudley thought there might have even been some concern under the know-it-all tone.

“Nobody ever told me! I’d never even heard of him before today!” Harry said indignantly. He'd long become used to the way things were for him –  _ ‘the way things were’ _ being that no one ever spoke of his parents or anyone associated with them or anything else that might have possibly ever had anything to do with them. 

“ _ Really _ ?” half the first years squawked, disbelieving. 

“Really,” Harry huffed. “Aunt Petunia never talks about my parents.” There was an edge, there, this time – that small part of Harry that would never stop yearning for a parent, no matter how much Dudley had tried to shield him from his parents’ fear and disgust. 

“Muggles are weird,” Ron concluded, digging into his eggs with renewed gusto.

“Hey,” Dean threw back. “That’s not a ‘muggle’ thing. Believe me, I’ve three sisters, there are no such things as  _ secrets _ in my house.” He shuddered.

Harry was starting to get that look on his face. The same one he got whenever people realized his parents were dead, when something happened at school like the teacher’s hair turning blue just when he was getting yelled at. Like the face he made whenever he got a little hit of realization:  _ the Dursleys don’t love me _ . Because Harry wasn't ever going to  _ really _ fit in anywhere, even here. It wasn't just magic that made him different. 

“We just . . . don’t talk about that sort of stuff,” Dudley scrambled as Harry studiously chopped a strip of bacon into smaller and smaller pieces with one tine of his fork. “Family stuff, I mean. There's Aunt Marge, but that's it. I don't think our grandparents are alive but I could be wrong, I suppose.” The quivering edge his vision had taken on began to fade a bit with the distraction. 

_ Distraction from what, diddykins? That you're a disgusting lump of shit that has no hope of ever living happily because you're so fucked up inside you'll never be able to even try and you're so idiotic on top of it all that you never would have even realized it on your own if it weren't for those dement–  _

“Right,” Seamus decided loudly for the rest of them. “Just your family, then. Weird.” Dudley thought that was a bit rich of him to proclaim, with the half an eyebrow he had left still smoking slightly, but kept his mouth shut. He wasn't wrong, after all. 

* * *

“You're staying for Christmas? But it's your first year away from home!” Hermione asked, a suspicious note creeping into her words. Dudley wasn't quite sure what she thought he was hiding, but that tone probably didn't mean anything good for him in the future. 

“I'm staying too, you know,” Ron inserted as he attempted to balance the feather he was supposed to be levitating on the tip of his wand. “Then again, I'm the sixth. They've sort of stopped caring by this point.” Dudley frowned at him. If he remembered properly, the Weasleys had had more than enough care for their many children, if the way they'd taken to Harry had been any sign. He wondered about that, sometimes – if he’d changed the relationship Harry would've had with them. In a flash, he remembered the pretty, red-headed girl in the engagement photo that had somehow found its way into the paper. 

“I'd’ve gone away to board at muggle school anyways,” he explained. “I wouldn't have seen them then. Summer is only a few months away.” 

“But that's so  _ long _ !” Hermione replied. 

Dudley blinked at her, trying to remember his first year at Smeltings – how slowly the days had passed, how long it had felt between weekends, let alone holidays, the way his mother had sent him care packages nearly every week to help string together the days until he’d be home again. 

At twenty, he hadn't been back to see his parents in nearly a year and a half. 

“We’ll survive somehow,” Harry interjected lazily from where he was tipping his chair back on two legs, gazing up at the library ceiling. “Besides, think of all the studying we'll be able to do.”

Hermione opened her mouth before she caught the sarcasm, and snapped it shut again to glare at the side of Harry’s head. 

“He may be joking, but I could probably use it,” Dudley told her. 

“I don't understand why you think that,” she frowned at him. “Your performance so far has been perfectly acceptable. You're not an idiot,” she said pointedly, as Harry snorted at Ron accidentally tipped the feather onto his face and sneezed at the tickle.

Dudley shrugged. She'd only seen him here, at Hogwarts, where everything had been made artificially easy by the shadow that had overtaken him. She didn't know what he was really like. 

_ She doesn't know you're a stupid, fat, spineless worm incapable of free thought– _

“School’s always been hard for me. Magic is . . . different. But that doesn't mean I've gotten any better at writing papers,” he tells her. “I'm not smart, like you. I have to work at it.” Hermione flushed a bit. 

“W-well, you know, you're not that bad. And it's not being clever that matters, it's how hard you're willing to work!” She declared emphatically with the air of something oft-repeated, slapping a hand against the table. He grinned back at her, knowing that in her own way she was complimenting him. 

“Thanks, Hermione.”

“You're welcome,” she replied without meeting his eyes, her cheeks still pink. 

_ She doesn't know what you're really like, you lazy disgusting pig – _

Dudley turned back to his papers, stuffing the voice to the back of his mind for now. She didn't know how he really was. And she wouldn't ever have to, as long as he could keep hiding it. 

* * *

The day after classes ended for the holidays, the last day with all the students still at the school, Harry went missing for nearly an hour. He was back by dinner time, smiling broadly if a bit grey-faced. 

“Professor Dumbledore,” he explained away softly over the pudding, gesturing for them to keep quiet. “He wanted to know if I would meet with Mr. Black over christmas.” He looked almost excited, in a queasy sort of way. 

“Mr. –you can't mean  _ Siriu _ –” 

“Shut  _ up _ , Ronald!” Hermione hissed as Harry slapped a hand over Ron’s mouth. Ron wriggled away.

“But– that's kind of incredible, isn't it? I mean, he's got to be at least halfway to the moon already if he's not completely off his rocker yet–”

“I mean, they told me he'd be here, and I guess I should at least consider it–” Harry shrugged. 

“Of course you should, Harry, what an incredible opportunity this is–” Hermione intervened.

“What do  _ you  _ want?” Dudley interrupted. They all shut up and stared at Dudley. He ignored them, meeting Harry’s eyes before continuing. “I don’t care what everyone else thinks, or what that man wants, and you shouldn’t either. Do you  _ want _ to meet him?” He tried not to think of the way Harry’s face had lit up whenever he’d gotten a letter from his godfather, the way he’d thought he was being sneaky when he went straight to his room every time he got one to read it immediately before dashing off a reply. The way Harry’s nightmares had doubled in intensity the summer he’d turned sixteen. He’d been different, after that. Uncaring of what Petunia and Vernon thought anymore, not afraid to push back, violent and angry with a tight line of fear under every insult, every taunt. 

Dudley didn’t want to see that Harry again, but this wasn’t his choice. This wasn’t Dudley’s choice, or Dumbledore’s, or Sirius Black’s, or that fucking shadow’s. 

It was Harry’s. 

Harry met his gaze squarely, before giving a weak smile. “I think that maybe I do.”

Dudley nodded. “Then that’s what you’ll do.”


	17. Chapter 17

The castle seemed unimaginably quiet once everyone had left. Dudley found himself floating around that first day after everyone had left, wandering into the strange rooms and corridors he’d never really taken notice of before. The shadow seemed somehow less immediate in its presence, like it was sucking up less of the air around him. Like he could breathe better than usual.

Eventually he noticed the growing shadows and made his way back to the common room. He’d missed lunch, apparently, and Harry and Ron were already curled up in the armchairs in a particularly cozy corner of the room playing wizard’s chess. Ron had tried to explain the rules to Dudley at some point, but the autonomy of the pieces disturbed him deeply and he’d never had a good mind for strategy besides. 

“What time do you meet with Black?” Dudley asked Harry once he’d made his way over to them.

“Dudley! Where’ve you been? You missed lunch!” Dudley shrugged and poked Harry in the side so he could slide into the oversized armchair with him. 

“Was looking around. Dinner’s soon, anyways.”

“You find anything interesting?” Ron asked as he nudged a piece along, muttering darkly at it under his breath when it began cursing at him in its squeaky little voice. “Fred and George must have the entire school mapped at this point. I’ve been trying to convince them to show me some secret passages but they won’t.”

Dudley shrugged before poking at Harry again. “What time do you have to go?” he repeated.

Harry gave that sort of half-shrug he always did when he was uncomfortable, his shoulders coming up around his ears as he squashed himself further back into the chair.

“After dinner,” he finally answered, before telling his pawn to take the bishop Ron had moved into its path. Ron directed his queen to retaliate, which it did with glee, beating the pawn over the head until she could drag it off to the side and take its place. 

“And checkmate,” he said smugly. “You’re really not very good at this.”

Harry scrunched his nose up at Ron, sticking his tongue out before wriggling a little more into Dudley’s side.

“Are you nervous?” Dudley asked. With Harry sunk back into the seat he couldn’t see his face, but he could feel his head shaking all the same.

“Not really. It’s just . . . strange.” He was speaking quietly, almost a whisper. Ah. Not quite ready to share his feelings on the matter with Ronald just yet, then.

_ Of course not, you imbecile, why would you even bring it up you stupid twit –  _

“Where are Fred and George?” He asked Ron, leaning forward on the edge of the seat and allowing Harry to sink back into the shadows some more. Dudley tried not to think of what else was lurking in the dark there.

“Off creating trouble, I’m sure,” Ron’s older brother interjected pompously as he came flouncing into the room. “I’m quite glad you three are being sensible. So far, at least.” He eyed them beadily, as if he suspected their relaxed positions were just a façade to hide the dastardly things they’d get back to as soon as his back was turned. “Are you coming to dinner? It’s starting soon. And you, Dursley, don’t think you can keep skipping meals just because there aren’t any classes. If you’re not there you won’t eat until the next meal.”

Dudley squished back in the chair a little bit, hoping Percy’s attention would be drawn away. He wondered how this had become his life – that people felt the need to remind him to eat, instead of the other way around.  _ Stupid, fat, swollen cow, you’re disgusting, you make people sick just looking at you, how can anybody live with themselves like that– _

Harry squirmed his way back out of the chair, grabbing Dudley’s arm and pulling him up as he stood. “C’mon, let’s go eat, Dudley. You must be starving.” He was probably anxious to finish the meal so he could meet with Sirius Black, Dudley realized, so he let himself be pulled along.

Dinner was quiet with so many people gone for the holidays, and the handful of students left in the castle were all seated at the same table, along with the few faculty who had deigned to remain in the castle for the holidays. Dumbledore smiled brightly around at them all, offering rolls and mash and sugared orange peel with a disturbing level of glee. The Weasley twins, having boldly seated themselves on either side of Dumbledore, were the only ones to take him up on his offers.

Once dessert had come and gone and students had begun to drift off back towards their respective houses, Dumbledore rose and approached where Harry and Dudley had lingered, picking reluctantly at pools of ice cream. 

“Mr. Potter, are you ready?” Harry half rose before turning to look at Dudley, a strange look on his face. 

“Aren’t you coming too?” 

“Did you want me to?” He replied, startled. It simply hadn’t occurred to him anywhere along the line that Harry might want him along. But of course he would, meeting some strange man he didn’t know for the first time, he’d want something familiar along,  _ stupid, idiot _ –

“I suppose not,” Harry mumbled, looking away again as he disentangled himself from the bench. Dudley thought of saying something, anything, but Harry was already trotting away after Dumbledore out of the Great Hall, and the chance was gone.

_ Pathetic, idiotic little shit, can’t even think of anything but yourself – _

“Right,” Dudley told his puddle of ice cream as it disappeared from his plate, leaving it sparkling clean. “I’ll just go wait in the common room then.”

* * *

Harry was quiet when he came back to the common room, not long after the others had all drifted up to bed. Dudley didn't want to press him – knew that this was something intensely private, this connection with a man who'd known his parents, who'd cared deeply for him in another life, who he would come to care for deeply in return. Harry didn’t have to tell him anything unless he wanted to.

But then Harry curled up beside him on the couch in front of the fireplace, knees tucked up against his chest and his head tipped over onto Dudley’s shoulder. 

“What's the matter?” He asked Harry, heart jumping in his throat. What if it hadn't gone well? What if something he'd done had damaged the relationship between Harry and this man before it had even begun? What if he was just  _ a complete idiot, can’t do anything right, ruining things just by being here _ – 

Harry cut into his thoughts before they could spiral any further out of control. 

“He asked me to live with him.” Harry curled himself a little more into Dudley’s side as he spoke. “Said that I would've, if things had gone differently. He knew my mum and dad. Knew me when I was a baby.”

Dudley was so unsettled by what Harry had said that it took him a moment to recognize the emotion he was feeling.

He was  _ angry _ . Utterly, incandescently furious. 

“He did  _ what? _ ”

Harry’s head snapped up. “I didn't say  _ yes, _ Dudley. He just offered.”

“I don't care what  _ you _ did. He shouldn't have asked you that!”

“Dudley, he didn't mean it, not really–”

Dudley exploded up off the couch. “That's even worse! He had  _ no _ right–” 

“Dudley, c’mon, it doesn't matter. Sit back down–”

But Dudley wasn't listening anymore. How  _ dare _ that man. After Dumbledore had put Harry through that in two lifetimes, after all Dudley had done to keep it that way, after how long they’d prattled on about the protections in place, the protections that would only work in that home, the protections Harry needed to stay alive. 

“Where is he? Dumbledore’s office?” Dudley stuffed his feet back into his trainers, on the floor beside the couch. 

“I– yes, but Dudley, he's probably gone already – where are you  _ going _ ?”

“I'll be back later,” he snapped over his shoulder, and let the portrait fall shut behind him. 

* * *

“God, he’s gorgeous, Remus,” Sirius moaned into his hands. “He looks just like James. And he has Lily’s eyes, did you see that? I’d forgotten how green they were. Oh, he’s perfect. And so big now, and I’ve missed so much–”

“Breathe, Sirius,” Remus rubbed a hand between his shoulder blades. “You have all the time in the world to make it up, now.” He gave a dark laugh. “At least you have an excuse.”

Sirius snapped his head up from where he’d been cradling it in his hands. “Remus,  _ no _ , you heard Dumbledore, he was living in the muggle world, no one was allowed to see him–”

“I could’ve tried harder. I’ve lived in the muggle world before. I could’ve, if I’d really tried. But after James and Lily were gone, and then you, and Peter–” Remus cut himself off. “I just gave up, Sirius.”

They fell into a silence. Dumbledore had lent them his office to meet with Harry, tactfully disappearing after showing Harry up, and had yet to return.

Sirius laughed suddenly. “God, what a depressing pair we make.”

Remus quirked a smile at him. “Oh, I don’t know–” 

He was cut off by the door to the office banging open.

“You had  _ no  _ right!”  

Sirius turned to look at the boy who’d entered rather dramatically. His hair was dishwater blonde and his pale cheeks were flushed with anger.

“You don’t get to say things like that to him!” the boy continued, storming up to where they were seated, coming to a halt right in front of Sirius. Remus sighed.

“Dudley, I presume?” he asked. Sirius thought back to the boy who’d featured prominently in Harry’s stories, spoken of with more fondness than either his aunt or his uncle combined.

The boy’s eyes flashed over to Remus. “ _ Yes _ , I  _ am _ !” He practically yelled. “And you had  _ no _ right!” He rounded on Sirius again.

“Oi,” he said, starting to get angry now. “I’m his godfather, I have every right–”

“NO, YOU DON’T!” The boy shouted, cutting him off. “You  _ don’t _ have every right – I don’t give a fuck who you are – you don’t have  _ any _ right, because you _ weren’t there _ .”

Sirius sucked in a breath at that. 

“ _ You _ weren’t there for him. And yeah, sure, maybe you’ve been dealt a shit hand, maybe it isn’t your fault that you’ve been absent, but I don’t care. You weren’t there, and you don’t get to come in and make offers like that, try to take him away from m- his family,” the boy stumbled over his words. 

_ From me _ , he’d been going to say. Sirius could see it in his eyes now, the frantic edge. He was worried they were going to take Harry away from him.

“You don’t get that right,” the boy repeated, his voice going quiet. 

Sirius sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face.“It doesn’t matter anyways. He turned me down.”

The boy snarled at him. “ _ I don’t care _ ,” he snapped. “You shouldn’t have even asked him that in the first place. You don’t get to put decisions like that on his shoulders. He’s just eleven, he doesn’t know what he wants, he’s an idiot!” 

Sirius suddenly recognized who he was talking to. He remembered it from when he’d been around that age, fighting with his parents over Regulus, and later with Regulus himself over the bad decisions he’d made, the decisions he’d let their parents make for him. 

Dudley was a big brother. 

Sirius sighed again, dropping his head back into his hands.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t’ve asked him that. I’m sorry.”

“ _ You _ – . . . oh,” the boy deflated, suddenly looking very small. Eleven years old and all elbows and knees, like Harry. Harry, who loved this boy like a brother, who cared very much for him, who probably cared very much what he thought of the other people in Harry’s life.

“I won’t ask him again, Dudley. I promise. I realize that it was a mistake.” 

Dudley collapsed into an armchair, nothing left to hold him up now that there was no one to shout at anymore. He stared back at Sirius with wide eyes, looking raw in the way only children can, all thin skin and sharp edges.

“It was wrong for me to ask him that,” he continued carefully, “but you have to understand. I can’t . . . I lost everything, back then. I can’t let him go.”

It was Dudley’s turn to hold his head in his hands. “I’m not – you can still see him. He can come stay with you sometimes. But he can’t . . . you need to take care of him.” He was grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes, slowly, back and forth. When he looked up again his face was red and splotchy from the friction. “He needs you. He needs more people in his life, people who get – all this,” he gestured widely at the room. 

Magic, Sirius realized. People who know magic. Dudley was magic, sure, but his parents weren’t. Lily was muggleborn – her magic had been a serious point of contention between herself and her older sister, Sirius remembered.

“And his parents, he’s never really . . .” Dudley sighed. “Things weren’t ever good, exactly, between mum and Aunt Lily.” God, that sounded weird.  _ Aunt Lily _ . When did everyone in SIrius’s life get so old? He barely remembers anything beyond those years at Hogwarts, long and idyllic in comparison to the horror of what came after.

“And at home, we never really talk about them. And Harry doesn’t –” the boy cut himself off, rose to his feet suddenly. 

“Just don’t ask him that again. Don’t put decisions like that on him.” Sirius saw the watched the tension leak back into the boy’s frame. “If there comes a time for something like that . . . ask Dumbledore first.”

“I swear,” Sirius promised, his thoughts catching on that last part. Why Dumbledore, and not Harry’s guardians? Because they weren’t magic?

Dudley nodded once, sharply, avoiding Sirius’s eyes. “Thank you.”

Before Sirius could say anything else, Dudley had stomped from the room once more. Sirius turned to look at Remus with wide eyes.

“Well, that could have gone better.”

Remus was able to keep his mouth shut for approximately twelve seconds before bursting into laughter.

“Shut up,” Sirius told him, but he couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth. He slung an arm around Remus’s shoulders and tugged him in for a hug. “I think we might actually be okay,” he murmured into his hair. Remus sighed and wrapped an arm around him. 

“I think for once you might be right.”

* * *

Dudley found himself shaking as he walked back to the common room. Now that the anger was gone, he felt the undercurrent of fear rise to the forefront. What if they decided there was some other way instead, that they didn’t need Dudley or his parents? What if Harry didn’t need him after all?

What was the point of him being here?

The shadow was quiet, but Dudley would’ve almost welcomed its interference at this point. He needed guidance, he needed it telling him what he was supposed to be doing, he needed to hand over the controls because he didn’t know what the hell he was doing–

Dudley froze as he remembered the shadow sliding into him, settling like it belonged and using Dudley’s body as a tool, like a puppet. Was that what it wanted? Was he just in the right place at the right time? Were these even his thoughts now, was he just overwhelmed by it all, or had it planted the idea of surrender, tempting him with thoughts of serenity until he finally crumbled?

For the first time, Dudley found himself searching for the shadow. He found himself spinning in slow circles, scanning the shadows that clung to the corridor for any hint of movement, any sign that things were still – well, not good, but fine. Acceptable. Something he could resign himself to. 

The relief at finally spying it, watching him dully from behind a coat of armor, was crushing.

_ It’s okay. Fine, Everything is fine. _

Dudley clung to his mantra all the way back to the common room, all the way through reassuring Harry, up into his bed where he curled on his side in the dark and watched the shadow as it slithered over his sheets and up across the canopy of his bed hangings. 

_ We’re fine, we’re fine, we’re fine. _

Everything was fine.


	18. Chapter 18

It took Dudley a long time to fall asleep, and when he finally did it was only to wake often and disoriented. Relief eventually came in the form of Ron shouting the rest of the tower awake with talk of presents. 

Dudley was a little leery at the prospect of presents – he wasn’t quite sure what to expect from his parents, and found himself oddly relieved when a cursory inspection of the small pile at the foot of his bed revealed no presents from them. He’d never been away for Christmas as a child, but he remembered some of the presents they’d sent Harry early on, mean and spiteful and petty, purposefully disappointing and a little cruel, even, when he imagined Harry sitting here with Ron, a lifetime away, opening the lone parcel from his family to find – what had it been, a pair of old socks? Some second-hand grungies? A five-pence piece?

“C’mon then, what’ve you got,” Ron goaded from his own pile of misshapen gifts. Most were small and poorly wrapped, but there were nearly double the number of Harry and Dudley’s own respective stacks combined – from his family, Dudley presumed. 

Harry was quick to gather up his own presents and spring from his own bed to Dudley’s without his feet ever touching the ground. Dudley had to grasp his elbow to prevent him from tumbling off the side of the bed, but Harry only laughed as he toppled over onto his stomach, half-squashing the packages in his arms. 

He was nearly as quick as Ron to tear through the presents, depositing the planner he’d received from Hermione in his school bag after a cursory glance, immediately tearing open any packages of candy to sample, giving Dudley a quick hug for the red- and gold-striped scarf he’d received. Dudley had split the last of the galleons leftover from buying their supplies between the two of them back at the start of term. He’d made prodigious use of the mail-order catalogues that had started floating around in November to purchase gifts for Harry and the others. 

Dudley watched for a bit as Harry and Ron traded sweets and compared lumpy jumpers, apparently from Mrs. Weasley (Dudley tried to ignore the warm, fuzzy feeling that sprang up in his chest when he uncovered a lumpy jumper to call his own, grey and warm and with a large “D” stitched across the front). Harry had already forgotten the slight bitterness that had been there the night before, that unsaid thing that rose between them whenever Harry didn't understand Dudley and Dudley couldn't explain that the only reason he even existed was for Harry, to make up for all the horrible things he'd never done. Dudley was somehow always surprised when Harry was quick to forget arguments between them. For all that Harry could be a vicious, vengeful little thing when slighted, he was always quick to forgive Dudley. For all that Dudley didn't deserve it, he was always grateful. 

“What's that, then?” Ron asked thickly through a mouthful of chocolate frog. Harry turned the last parcel over in his hands before shrugging. 

“Dunno,” he said as he held it up to the light, as if he'd be able to see through the thick wrapping paper to divine the present within. It was the squashy sort of package that spoke of soft, slippery items not easily wrapped. “No note.”

“Maybe it’s another scarf,” Dudley guessed. “Or a blanket.”

“No,” Ron contested. “It looks to heavy. Liquid, almost.”

“A thousand jelly beans, all out of their packages,” Harry pondered, “just sliding around.”

He waited half a second longer before tearing it open. The contents nearly slithered to the floor. 

“Is that velvet?” Ron asked. 

“It looks like silk,” Dudley countered. 

“It's heavier than it looks,” Harry said as he lifted the fabric. A piece of parchment fluttered to the ground. Dudley scooped it up and passed it back to Harry, who read it aloud. 

“ _ ‘Your Father left this in my possession before he died. It is time it was returned to you. Use it Well.’ _ ” 

Harry's face twisted up – not quite grieving, because he'd never known his parents, but sad all the same. Mourning the idea of them maybe. Harry quickly arranged the material back in its packaging, trying to wrap it back up again. The fabric slid and slithered over the paper, but Harry managed to gather it together in some semblance of neatness fairly quickly.

Ron had a funny look on his face. He'd frequently moaned about his excess of relatives, but Dudley guessed that he'd never really contemplated Harry's dearth of them. 

Dudley sighed. “D’you reckon anyone else is up yet?” 

Ron and Harry snatched on the diversion, scrambling up and out of the dormitory to go find the other Weasleys in the tower. Dudley lingered, gathering together paper and taking a moment to slide the package underneath Harry's pillow. He wasn't sure who cleaned the tower – or if it was even people at all instead of some sort of spell – but he was certain they didn't deserve the aftermath of eleven year old boys on Christmas morning. 

He wondered how this morning had gone before, in that other life when he wasn’t here. Surely the same present had been sent, and surely Harry had opened it with Ron right there. Dudley thought back to what the shadow had said to him more than once –  _ you’re making him weak _ – and wondered if it was true. 

Before, there had always been something hard and a little mean in Harry, something that had yet to appear in this life. While Dudley was grateful, because on some level it meant that Harry had never needed to develop it in this life, it also left him vulnerable. Dudley had this image in his mind’s eye, of the Harry from before, razor sharp around the edges, snide and defensive – and later on, resigned and tired. He didn’t know if that made this Harry weak or not. 

* * *

The rest of the day passed in a blur of snowball fights and hot chocolate and attempting to toast anything and everything edible on sticks over the fire in the common room, with varying levels of success. There was a warm, dozy sort of atmosphere over the whole castle, and by the time dinner was over people were falling asleep into the pudding. 

Dudley himself was drowsily contemplating the dredges left at the bottom of his cup of tea when the headmaster took a seat beside him. The sleepy contentedness fell away instantly. Something about Dumbledore kept Dudley on edge, made him feel all wrong in his own skin –  _ they can tell, just how disgusting you are, they know and you’re too stupid to see it, how revolting you are _ – 

“I was hoping I might have a word with you in my office,” the headmaster said lightly, placing his own mug (hot chocolate, piled high with marshmallows and whipped cream) down beside Dudley’s.

“What, now?” Dudley asked rudely. He felt stupid, too slow to react properly and politely. He glanced down the table to where Harry and Ron were lording over a pile of presents won from christmas crackers (real presents, too, not just sweets and paper crowns – Harry was the proud owner of a new wizard’s chess set, and someone down the table was sporting a jewel-encrusted, velvet-poufed coronet).

“No, but tomorrow morning would do nicely,” Dumbledore replied. He had a way of sounding kind and forgiving and slightly patronizing at all times. “Not too early, of course.” With a smile he rose and left Dudley to his darkening thoughts.

_ {You don’t need to be afraid of him,} _ the voice whispered in the back of his head, not quite the shadow, not quite his own thoughts.  _ {He doesn’t know what you are.} _

“Shut up,” Dudley mumbled to the table.

* * *

“Come in, my boy, sit, please,” Dumbledore invited, gesturing to the squashy armchair on the other side of the desk. “Lemon drop?”

Dudley shook his head, feeling numb. The shadow had re-appeared in full force overnight, and was now weighing down on his shoulders like a particularly large cat, except the weight was cold and sickening and offered no comfort whatsoever. 

“Perhaps not. Too much indulgence after such an indulgent feast,” the Headmaster smiled. Dudley shrugged, not wanting to admit that his stomach had been twisted up in angry knots all night after their talk, and he’d finally sicked up around half past two. He was grateful Ron and Harry slept like the dead.

“I heard you spoke to Harry’s godfather,” Dumbledore said after waiting. He always seemed to wait before speaking, as if he expected Dudley might start the conversation. 

Dudley shrugged half-heartedly, shrinking down into his chair. He’d lost his temper. Not a good start, that. Dumbledore waited half a beat longer before continuing on again.

“I’m curious, Dudley, what is your impression of Mr. Black?” 

“My – what?”

“Of his character,” Dumbledore explained, smiling genially over his half-moon spectacles. “I’ve known him for quite a long time – since he was just your age, in fact – and I’m curious to see him through your eyes. Fresh minds, and all that.”

“I – well,” Dudley frowned down at his lap. “He wanted to take Harry away,” he settled on finally.  

“Young Harry declined, I believe.”

“Well,  _ yes _ , but Harry’s eleven. It shouldn’t have been offered in the first place,” Dudley said firmly. He still wasn’t sure why it rankled him so much – certainly because of the impropriety of trying to take an eleven year old away from his family (who was, as far as Sirius Black was aware, perfectly loving and caring), but also because Harry was eleven, and didn’t know what he wanted, and because Harry  _ needed _ to be in that house, and because he had tried to take Harry away from Dudley, who was only here because of Harry in the first place. 

Maybe, because in another lifetime, Sirius had swept into Harry’s life and left it again to abruptly, leaving Harry angry and scared and grieving. That had been the first time Dudley had really begun looking at Harry, that summer they turned sixteen, when Harry had come back thinner and sadder and sharper than ever. 

“He’s just, he was  _ so _ . . . he seemed–”

“Reckless, yes,” Dumbledore spoke, finding the words that Dudley could not. “His defining character flaw, I believe.”

Dudley nodded sharply, twisting his fingers into the hem of his jumper. 

“He’s a good man, Dudley. And he cares for Harry very much. And he has you, to keep him in line, apparently,” Dumbledore said this last bit with a smile. Dudley shrugged, feeling his face heat. 

“I’ll let you get back to your holidays, now,” Dumbledore rose, coming around the desk to see Dudley out. When Dudley stood, he placed a hand on his shoulder – heavy and steady, a warm spot amidst the cool of the shadow. 

“Keep in mind, Dudley – while Sirius will always  _ want _ the best for Harry, he will perhaps not always know what that is. I trust you to remain steadfast for Harry’s sake.”

Dudley nodded again as they reached the spiral staircase. 

When the door shut behind him, he felt heavier than ever.

* * *

Harry was alone in the dormitory when he returned, curled up on Dudley’s bed with his feet on the pillow, petting at the shimmering fabric pooled in his lap.

“Turns you invisible,” he told Dudley when he nudged Harry aside to lay down beside him. 

“I wonder how,” Dudley mumbled. He felt cold, deep down in his chest, and Harry was a wonderful line of heat all along his side. 

“Enchantments, I suppose,” Harry said. “I wonder which ones.”

“Hermione would probably know,” Dudley sighed. His long night was catching up to him, the knot in his stomach finally loosening.

“I’ll ask her when she gets back,” Harry replied quietly. 

“Don’t go getting into trouble with it,” Dudley mumbled to Harry. 

“Me? I would never,” he huffed a laugh, turning onto his side and curling closer to Dudley.

Dudley might have replied, but he was already drifting to sleep.

* * *

The rest of the holidays passed quickly and in no time at all the other students were back, Hermione among them. She bounced into the entrance hall, pink-cheeked and darker than she had been since the start of term. 

“Found a spot of sun, did you?” Dudley asked wryly. Hermione nodded, her hair bouncing wildly. It was frizzing up about her face from the combination of melting snow and the heat of the castle. 

“We went skiing, in the mountains,” she informed him happily. “Did you enjoy your holiday?”

Dudley shrugged. There was a warmth here that he’d never experienced elsewhere, but it came at the expense of his peace of mind. The days before and after christmas had alternated between luxuriant, bone-deep relaxation and agonizing tension. “Well enough, I suppose You?

Hermione gave that the look it deserved, but let it drop. “Yes, very much so. But I’m glad to be back,” she sighed contentedly, looking around at the castle.

_ Me too, _ Dudley didn’t say. 

* * *

Classes started shortly, holiday work was turned in, and all signs of Christmas cheer quickly faded from the castle, leaving everyone cold and miserable. 

Within a week Harry revealed the cloak to Ron and Hermione, and Hermione quickly obliged his curiosity by diving headfirst into research about invisibility cloaks, the history behind them, and the spells that went into making them – which were none, as it turned out.

“‘Typically woven from the hair of the demiguise,’” Hermione read aloud to them one evening in front of the fire in the common room. “I’d suspected as much, no witch or wizard has figured out the issue of disguising motion thus far, or if they have they’re not sharing it,” she continued without looking up from the tome that was nearly the size of her torso –  _ A History of Spellcraft _ , the spine read.

As Hermione prattled on about the art of spellcrafting, all the things that could go wrong, the difficulty and research involved in such a task, Dudley’s mind sparked a thought that would leave him sleepless for many nights. 

Where did the shadow come from? Who had that girl from the bar been? Before, it’d been simple – magic, it was all magic, god awful and terrifying and awe-inspiring all at the same time. But now he knew better – he learned that it wasn’t just chaos and calamity, there was an order. They had names for things, and explanations, and histories and taxonomies. Everything had its place.

So where did he come in?

This thought haunted Dudley for weeks, all through papers and exams and quidditch matches and potions and the bitter scottish winter melting into a slightly less bitter early spring. He nearly didn’t question the shadow fading bit by bit, tattooing itself into his skin, leaving him cold and sleepless and ill most of the time. Maybe he was crazy, maybe he’d dreamed up his first life, or this one, or both of them. Maybe he’d been concussed by the fall all those years ago, and this was all some elaborate coma dream – or maybe he’d been brain damaged, and he was living the fantasy out in his head while his body drooled into a pan. Maybe it was God, or fate, or a ghost come for revenge.

Maybe he was dead, and this was some sort of strange purgatory he’d been cursed to. 

These hopeless, anxious thoughts carried him clear through to March, until one night when he woke with his heart in his throat and murder on his mind.


	19. Chapter 19

Dudley was out of Gryffindor tower and halfway down the corridor before he was even fully awake. His head was throbbing, his heart pounding, but his feet beat a familiar path down staircases and through narrow passageways all without his say so. He could feel it, there, in that dark, rotting space in the back of his head where it had made itself home – because that’s where the shadow has been, hasn’t it? Burrowing deeper and deeper into him, eating away at his mind so slowly he didn’t even realize it was there, until now, until it was too late.

Because he recognized this feeling – the feeling of the shadow slipping into control, leaving him caged in his own body – only it wasn’t quite the same. The shadow hadn’t taken over, not completely. It had just filled in all the empty spaces he’d left behind, and waited.

The shadow had burrowed deep, wrapped itself in him so thoroughly that he could feel it back. It had been so quiet lately, practically invisible, because he didn’t need to hear its voice anymore, not now that he could  _ feel _ what it wanted. 

_ Quirrell _ , he knew, and he even knew why, now. Because Quirrell had that  _ thing _ inside him, like Dudley had his own, only Quirrell’s shadow was actively trying to kill people.

Dudley’s wasn’t trying to kill anyone besides him. 

Probably.

Actually, he wasn’t so sure about that either, because Dudley’s wand was clenched tight in his fist, like he was going to gouge into somebody with it, not like he was ready for a bit of delicate wand work. Dudley didn’t feel ready to kill anybody. He didn’t want to kill anybody.

The voice in the back of his head spoke to him, somewhere between  _ but you have to _ and  _ there’s no part of you worth protecting from this _ .

His breath was coming shorter and shorter, till he could scarcely breath at all, and suddenly he found himself before a door – a door he recognized, vaguely, maybe having passed it in the corridors before – and then he was pushing past it. 

_ Kill him, kill him, kill him _ , his mind was whispering, before he even recognized what he was seeing – a great, three-headed beast, like something out of his nightmares, and standing before it, a man. Quirrell, he knew, because who else could it be? And a thread of music, so delicate and at odds with everything else that it took the harp in the corner, plucking away without any hands, to help Dudley recognize what it was. 

And then he was surging forward, half out of his control and half spurred by the desperation leaking into him,  _ killhimkillhimkillhim _ .

Dudley was right – there was no fancy wand-waving, no flash of lights – just his wand, now nothing more than the sharpest thing at hand, sinking into the soft flesh of Quirrell’s throat. There was a strange, squelching sound, and some sputtered words choked by blood, but then it was done.

The body fell, and a shade rose from it, fleeing the room, but Dudley just watched it go. Something inside of him, the  _ thing _ inside of him compelled him to find a stretch of cloth near Quirrell’s neck that hadn’t been drenched in blood and wipe his wand and hands on it. He found himself surprised, in a distant sort of way, at the large amount of blood leaking out onto the stone floor and how little he had gotten on his own hands, barely more than a few flecks. That same compulsion made him take care not to step in the pooling blood, to walk carefully around the body, to drag the harp away from the great dog – asleep, he realized, even now with blood slowing leaking closer towards its massive paws. He opened the door behind him, glanced down the corridor, tipped the harp over and watched it shatter and cease its music before stepping out of the room and closing the door firmly behind him.

He heard the dog wake, and heard it discover the body, and heard it growl and snarl and tear into Quirrell’s flesh with a sound that Dudley had never heard before and wouldn’t have even been able to begin to describe. 

It was only when he was firmly esconced in his bed again, wand left under the couch in the common room, his hands freshly scrubbed and feet still icy cold that Dudley finally allowed himself to cry – great, shuddering gasps, sobs sucking painfully at his chest as he tried to keep quiet. 

_ For Harry _ , his mind soothed.  _ For everybody. So people can be safe, so things can be better, so  _ you _ can be better. _

Dudley had never known what it meant to be a good man, but he was sure that this wasn’t it. 


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You there - yes, you, the one with opinions who can speak or read some level of english! I am looking for a beta, and it could be you!  
> I have many, many plans for this story, but (as you may have noticed) I've been having trouble getting these plans down in writing as something resembling a plot. I really need someone to bounce ideas off of!  
> Seriously, anyone who is interested, please hit me up! You can leave a comment or email me at doctor.agon.ao3@gmail.com!  
> Any help would be greatly appreciated!
> 
> Also Wycombe Abbey is a real school that I've borrowed because I'm lazy.

The next day there was talk in the castle – some older students who’d snuck out after hours, some light sleepers, some prefects who’d been on patrol. They all said there’d been some commotion with the professors – if they’d said anything at all, that is. The prefects especially were pale-faced and tight-lipped. Percy had come to find Ron early in the morning, wanting to see that he was in his bed though he wouldn’t say why. 

Classes were cancelled for the day. Meals would be served in the common room. Students weren’t to leave the tower.

By some unholy grace Dudley slept through all of this, having fallen asleep somewhere between stumbling into bed and the sun coming up. He didn’t dream.

He slept late, in fact. Later than he usually did, later than Harry and Ron. It wasn’t until Hermione came by to beat him about the head with his own pillow that he got up.

“Boys, honestly,” she huffed at him. Dudley sat up, feeling strange. Something was wrong, he knew, only he couldn’t remember just what it was, and then he scrubbed at his face and a fleck of red on his sleeve caught his eye. He managed to push Hermione away and disentangle himself from his sheets and swing his feet to the floor just before he was sick all over it.

“Dudley!” she gasped, obviously disgusted. But in the end, because Hermione was essentially a good person and an even better friend, she gripped his arm and pulled him out of bed and steered him towards the bathroom. She made him sit on the edge of the lone tub in the corner and pull up the legs of his pajamas (which had thankfully missed the worst of it) and turned on the water and made him rinse his feet. She didn’t say anything about his crying throughout it all, and retrieved a fresh towel from the basket beside the door, and let him wipe his face before steering him back out of the tub and back out of the bathroom and back into bed. 

All the while she was very quiet and very brisk and something about the roteness of it all brought Dudley back to himself. He was tired, and felt ill at the memory of the soft give of flesh under the pointed tip of his wand, and for some reason his whole body ached terribly, but things would still go on. Hermione would still worry needlessly about tests, and Harry would still whinge about homework, and Ron would still get angry when Seamus ate all the jam from the pot nearest them at breakfast and he had to go hunt one down from further down the table.

Hermione tugged the covers up and gave him a stiff pat on the head, because for all her awkwardness, let it never be said that Hermione Granger didn’t at least try to be kind and comforting.

“I know it’s terrible, being away from home for so long, especially when you’re ill,” she tried to reassure him. He didn’t know how to tell her that he didn’t care about his parents, that he didn’t need or even particularly want them to pat him on the head when he was ill, that he was far too old to care and never had when he was younger besides – for all her spoiling and pretence, Petunia had always shied from filth, and his father had long established a distant, gruffly proud sort of fatherly persona, and between the two of them he had learned that illness was  _ dirty _ and repulsive and on the whole, something to be ashamed of. 

He didn’t want to explain to Hermione what he had done the night before, or what was wrong with him, or that his life was so far removed from her own perception of it – crying because of who and what he was and all the horrible things he’d done, not because he was eleven and ill and far from home.

And he knew, from the itching at the back of his mind, that he couldn’t tell her even if he wanted to.  _ God _ , why would he ever want anyone to know what he was. 

Dudley felt more tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, and scrubbed at them angrily. 

“It’ll be alright,” Hermione soothed clumsily. “You may feel bad right now, but eventually things will be okay.”

“I know,” Dudley replied. Because he did know. Things  _ would _ eventually be alright, even if they weren’t alright for him. Somewhere, not too far away, even, someone was happy. And people would continue to be happy, and go out to the pub, and have children and get married and go to work. No matter what happened to him, things would, eventually, be okay. 

_ Harry _ would be one of those things, if Dudley had any say in it. 

So he smiled at Hermione, and scrubbed at his face and allowed her to bring up Percy the prefect to cluck at him for always getting sick and promise to pass the message on to McGonagall, and then Harry and Ron to chatter away beside him, and for her to pester him into at least reading ahead for potions, even as he burrowed further under the covers and let his eyes drift closed and let himself fall back into an uneasy sleep.

Something, somewhere, would be okay. Eventually.

* * *

 

Dudley dozed on and off throughout the day, waking startled and ill and confused every hour or so. At some point the others drifted back down to the common room, and Dudley was left alone until the shadows began to stretch in the late afternoon sun.

At one point he woke to find Professor Dumbledore seated beside his bed, face solemn and weary. Dudley was caught in a strange place, somewhere between terror and delirium at the sudden awakening, and could barely focus his eyes. It felt like the room kept spinning away from him, his eyes tracing dizzying circles very much without his say so.

“I am so very sorry that you must bear witness to such terrible things, Dudley,” the headmaster said, “but such knowledge can be vital.”

Dudley let his eyes drift closed. He could lie, he’d done it before,  _ Christ  _ it was his whole life and despite his fuck-ups no one had found out yet –

“He was a bad man,” Dudley told the headmaster. “Very bad. There was something inside him–” Something like the  _ thing _ that was inside Dudley now, even at that moment leaking over into him, putrid and horrible, and how was he any better? What did he know? He was in too deep, in over his head, what if he was just ruining everything and this was all for nothing –

Dudley swallowed thickly before continuing. “But he was alone. Something went wrong, and he– he didn’t–” 

“Thank you, Dudley,” Dumbledore sighed, sounding older than Dudley had ever heard him. “This burden seems too much for one so young, but you bear it admirably.”

But Dudley couldn’t sit here and take this man’s praise, not with the memory of that first hot spurt of blood over his hands. “Th–the thing, that was in him,” he found himself saying – anything to get away from the heavy sympathy he heard in the older man’s voice – “it survived. I–”  _ I was there, I did it, it was me _ – “I could see it. Like I was there. It fled the– the body.”

Silence reigned for a moment, before a cool, dry hand smoothed over his brow. Dudley flinched away, pressing his face down into the pillow. Another sigh, heavier than before, and then the headmaster was gone.

It was a very long time before Dudley could sleep again.

* * *

The next morning they were allowed back out of the tower and into the castle. The children had gotten the majority of their gossiping out of the way the day before, and any conjectures were just the rehashing of old theories. Quirrell had been announced dead in an unfortunate accident, although somehow rumors of his death had already been floating around. Exams for Defense Against the Dark Arts had been cancelled for the younger students, and classes for the older students (who took some wizarding exam akin to A-levels, as far as Dudley understood it) were taken over by Professors McGonagall, Snape, and Flitwick in turn. 

Over the next few weeks there was an investigation by wizards from the ministry who wore dark red robes and called themselves aurors and spent a long time hovering around the third floor and questioning students, followed by a somewhat lukewarm ceremony mourning Professor Quirrell’s passing. Hermione had the requisite panicking over the lack of structured education until she had worked out a self-study plan and had it approved by a harried-looking Professor McGonagall, and Harry and Ron celebrated by spending long, previously double-Defense filled afternoons out on the lawn taking turns on Harry’s broom and basking in the weak spring sunshine out by the lake.

April came and went, bringing with it many wet days and Gryffindor’s victory in the quidditch cup, no small part in thanks to Harry (this Dudley learned from the team captain himself, a specky, intense sort of boy who spent the celebratory party trying to recruit Dudley and waxing poetic about the good genes that their family must carry in between sobbing into a mug of something that may not have been entirely butterbeer). May came, and after it June, and exams, and Hermione bursting into tears when Madame Pince forced them out of the Library the night before their Charms exam because Ron had fallen asleep at the table and started snoring loudly enough for her to realize there were still students lurking in the back. 

When the professors unanimously gave a firm refusal to her request to write a Defense exam exclusively for her, she wrote one herself and browbeat Dudley, Harry and Ron into taking it alongside her in the library, proctored by Percy, who nearly shed tears over his pride at their initiative (though Dudley suspected that might have had something to do with the sleep deprivation, Percy having only just finished his own exhaustive exams – fifth year was an important year, apparently). 

Hermione graded them herself. Dudley would have been more annoyed at the ‘acceptable’ she gave him if he didn't know that she herself only scraped an ‘exceeds expectations.’

The last few days at Hogwarts were spent on farewells and parties and long afternoons basking in the sun by the lake and Dudley concentrating very, very hard on not thinking about anything at all.

* * *

The abrupt plunge back into the heart of muggle London was a shock. Somehow, cloistered in the strange castle with many things beyond the capabilities of his limited imagination, Dudley had almost forgotten about the rest of the world. Forgotten that things existed outside of the thousand or so people he’d been living alongside for the past ten months. It was invigorating and terrifying all at once.

Dudley felt on edge, wondering what mood his father would be in, if his father had bothered to turn up at all. However, Vernon seemed almost violently happy when he appeared in order to pick them up. Dudley had made sure their goodbyes were brief before he steered Harry and their trunks over to the line of cars where his father had usually parked when picking Harry up, always in a foul mood. 

The silent, absent rage of the summer before was gone, however – Vernon ignored Harry, as was the usual, but was quick to slap a broad hand across Dudley’s shoulder and offer to heave the trunks into the boot. 

“Good to have you back, Dudley. Your mother’s missed you. I know how you like to study, m’boy, but a Holiday or two during the year wouldn't go astray.”

Vernon continued on in this vein for the entire ride back to Privet Drive, pausing his monologue only to curse gleefully at the other drivers on the road. Something about it all was putting Dudley on edge, though he couldn't say what. Harry, for his part, seemed to be taking it in full swing – Dudley had always been the favorite, and Harry had long grown used to the fact that his happiest moments in the Dursley household came to be when his uncle was pretending he didn't exist. 

It wasn't until they reached home and Petunia – still the pale, nervous figure they'd left behind in September – had served dinner that Dudley was able to put a finger on it. 

“So, Dudley, join any teams?” Dudley glanced nervously over at Harry, not quite daring to break the strange tranquility that had persisted so far. 

“Er, no. First years usually aren't allowed.”

“Ah, well, always next year. What about your friends, the good sort?” Dudley stared hard at his father, waiting for the some explanation of this sudden bout of good will. 

“There's Hermione,” Harry finally interjected, unable to contain himself for any longer. Dudley kicked him under the table and mouthed at him to shut up, but once Harry got going he was hard to stop. 

“They study together in the library all day. It’s disgusting,” Harry continued happily, spooning more roast onto his plate. 

“There’s a lad! Charmer, just like your father!” Vernon chuckled. “And what do her parents do?” Petunia flinched minutely, but remained otherwise silent.

“Er,” Dudley glanced between his parents. “They’re dentists, I think,” he replied.

Petunia relaxed minutely. 

“And what school is she from, then? Wycombe?” Dudley blinked at his father, glanced at his mother’s stiff figure, pale-faced and wide-eyed and staring down at her plate like it held an adder.

Dudley clued in just in time to kick Harry under the table again as he opened his fat mouth.

“Yes, yes, Wycombe,” Dudley fumbled out, ignoring his mother’s sharp look. “We met at a social,” he added, thinking quickly. Harry was watching him like he’d grown a third eye.

Dudley pretended to stifle a not very convincing yawn. “Wow, is that really the time? I think I might just head to bed now, it’s been a long day–”

His mother sprang to her feet, her chair scraping harshly against the floor. “Quite right, off to bed now boys, plenty of time to catch up tomorrow!” Her voice was shrill and piercing, and she began stacking the plates frantically, ignoring the way the clanked loudly against each other with the force. Dudley lunged for the roast, hoisting it and kicking at Harry’s chair as he passed. “Help clean the table, Harry,” he hissed. Harry was staring at them both with wide eyes, but grabbed the basket of rolls nonetheless. Vernon frowned but didn’t protest Dudley grabbing his plate, and the manic edge was beginning to make a terrifying amount of sense.

The table was cleared more quickly than Dudley had ever seen it, and he left his mother, wild-eyed, scrubbing dishes at the sink in order to drag Harry upstairs into his room. 

“Dudley?” Harry asked the second the door was closed behind them.

“I– Harry, dad is–” Dudley made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. He felt like he was going insane. Had his father gone insane? Had his mother somehow convinced him that Dudley was attending Smeltings? Dudley remembered parent days from when he’d gone there, his father had to have wondered why there hadn’t been any, especially in his first year–

“Dudley, what’s going on?” Dudley realized he’d been pacing, and forced himself to stop, perching on the edge of the bed.

“Dad doesn’t know we go to Hogwarts, somehow,” Dudley finally managed. His hands were shaking. He’d barely touched his roast, but his stomach was twisting up in awful knots and he felt like he might be sick. 

“How– that’s impossible,” Harry managed, collapsing onto Dudley’s bed beside him. The spread was immaculate – his mother had obviously come in and cleaned his room at some point – but a musty, unused smell rose up from the mattress at the jostling. “He has to know. There’s no way he doesn’t,” Harry said, sounding nervous.

Dudley’s father had never been quite all there, when it came to magic – Dudley remembered him boarding up the windows, taking the family on a wild road trip, the manic edge that had creeped in and took over whenever magic was mentioned in his presence. But to imagine that he had just – snapped. It seemed impossible.

“Just . . . don’t say anything about it,” Dudley finally managed. “He – as long as we don’t say anything, it’ll be fine.”

For the first time since August, the itch at the back of his mind was perfectly silent. It had been a constant buzz for so long, the shadow lurking over his shoulder, eating into his mind until it’d made itself right at home. Even in the quiet moments, there had still been a sort of presence there. But now, nothing. Dudley didn’t know what it meant.

He startled when he felt a hand on his arm, but it was just Harry.

“I won’t,” he told Dudley, green eyes bright and earnest and somehow still untouched by everything that had happened. “I promise.”

And if Dudley had squashed him into a painfully tight hug, and refused to let go until Harry had dozed off, curled against Dudley like a cat, well. Harry wouldn’t say anything.

* * *

The first few weeks of summer passed by slowly. His father was out all day during the week, and sometimes Saturdays as well. Dudley wasn’t even sure that he still had his job – or, if he did, that his mother was seeing any of the money. She’d always been thin, but she’d grown almost grotesquely so in the time since he and Harry had been away. 

There were no more family dinners, after that first night, and barely any food in the house, either. When Harry bullied Dudley into following him over to Piers’s place on Tuesday – more through the promise of the sandwiches he knew Mrs. Polkiss would force on them during teatime than anything else – he realized that it wasn’t something that he could simply let be, like all the other things he’d let slide through the cracks over the years. Mrs. Polkiss pulled Dudley into the kitchen when he entered and asked after his mother in that strangely giddy, hushed tone that people took on when looking for a bit of gossip — especially the kind that had involved some sort of public humiliation. 

“Is everything all right at home, dearie? Your mother hasn’t been looking well. Poor dear, never coming round to our little get-togethers anymore, I hardly see her at all, and I heard from Jane down the way that she’s stopped coming round for tea as well —” 

“She’s been ill,” Dudley quickly improvised, heart in his throat. He cast his mind back to all the simpering, sentimentalized lies he’d made over the years to cover for his father’s behavior, both in this lifetime and the last. “You know, her health hasn’t always been the best, and she has a bit of a hard time keeping weight on —” a subtle jab at the weight that had layered itself onto Mrs. Polkiss’s hips over the past few years “— and Harry and I have been away at school all year—” a reminder of the highly prestigious public school he and Harry supposedly attended “—and father is just so busy at work all the time. It can be hard on her, I think. It’s been hard on Harry and I, being away from home so long.” There. They were normal, happy, successful — a tight-knit, high-achieving family unit, something like the one he imagined Hermione’s family might actually be. He mustered up a smile to cover his nerves. “I really am grateful to you, Mrs. Polkiss, and Piers, for always opening your home to Harry and I,” he added in to smooth any ruffled feathers. “You’ve been so kind.”

Mrs. Polkiss was a bit flustered, her cheeks coloring at the praise. “You’re such a sweet boy, Dudley. I hope your mother is feeling better now that you boys are home again,” she told him, smoothing back his hair before sliding over the tray of biscuits waiting on the counter. Dudley’s skin crawled at the touch, and he had to fight the impulse to shrug away from her. 

“Oh, yes,” Dudley managed, taking a biscuit before sidling out of the kitchen, ostensibly to join Harry upstairs in Piers’s room.

Instead he slid into the bathroom on the second floor and swallowed hard, chucking the biscuit into the bin beside the sink.

They knew. Everyone in the neighborhood, they knew that Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of Number Four, Privet Drive weren’t holding up. He thought back, a lifetime ago, to the last time his parents had been forced to face the reality of Harry’s world encroaching on their own. They’d handled it — well, poorly, but together all the same.  Mother and father, the two pillars of his life, gone a bit loopy but united to the end. Not falling apart like this, taking it out on each other, especially not where the neighbors could see. 

He needed to fix it. Needed to make it so nobody would ask any questions, because if they asked questions, and social workers got involved, and anyone put together the string of doctor’s visits and Harry’s pants which were nearly two inches too short by now and the fact that his parents weren’t exactly feeding them anymore . . . 

He needed . . . he didn’t know what he needed. Money, at the very least – he couldn’t keep foisting Harry off on the neighbors around mealtimes like a beggar, and sooner or later they’d need to get their new school supplies, and Harry’d had another growth spurt and would probably need new shoes, and uniform pants, though maybe they could just let the hems out on his old ones – but Dudley didn’t know how to sew. His mother had always taken care of things like that. Maybe he could learn, get a library book, maybe Hermione would know a spell, maybe he could search around the charity bins for something similar enough– 

Dudley bent over the sink and hyperventilated as quietly as possible, knuckles white as he tried to hold himself up. He could feel the shadow stirring inside of him, no help as usual unless it needed something from him, and he could barely breathe with the weight of everything piling up on his shoulders. His stomach was tying itself up in knots and for a moment he thought he might be sick. 

He slid to the ground, the cool tile making him shiver. It was only after several long minutes of sitting on the floor with his head between his knees that he was able to get up again. 

“Hey, Dud– Dudley?” Harry dropped the game controller, heedless of Piers crowing his sudden victory. “Dudley, what’s wrong?” He stood and grabbed Dudley’s wrists. Dudley’s hands were so pale they looked dead, unreal, especially with Harry’s long, brown fingers wrapped around them. 

“Nothing,” Dudley mumbled. His head was spinning. He just wanted to sit down, to not think anymore, but he  _ couldn’t _ because if he didn’t deal with it then everything would go wrong and Harry had to stay in that house or bad things would happen to him, bad things like Voldemort and Quirrell and Quirrell's blood slipping over Dudley’s fingers – 

“ _ Whoa _ ,” Piers said, his voice suddenly very close, and then two sets of hands were guiding him to the ground and he pushed his head back between his knees. “You okay, D?” Piers asked, voice anxious. He’d developed some weird sort of respect for Dudley after having been threatened off beating up little kids when they were younger, and Dudley had never quite managed to dissuade him of it.

“Dudley, what’s the matter?” Dudley made a small noise at the feeling of Harry’s fingers sliding through the hair at the nape of his neck.

“I don’t feel well,” he confessed after a few moments of careful petting. That much was obvious. They didn’t need to know why, though – he didn’t need Harry worrying, didn’t want to see his face get all pinched like it does when he’s anxious.

“You need some water?” Piers offered. “Have you eaten yet? Did you eat something bad?” 

Dudley’s stomach was still twisting and aching sharply, and he found himself gagging at the thought of food.

“Oh,” Harry breathed as Piers skittered back from Dudley. He pressed his face into his knees, taking shallow breaths. 

“My stomach hurts,” he admitted eventually, letting them draw their own conclusions. He didn't know what they'd decide was wrong with him, but he hoped that it'd throw them off his panic – panic over something stupid that he should've been able to figure out, that he’d figured out before in another life when he'd cut contact with parents at nineteen and had needed to find a job or become homeless. He could do this, he knew he could, he just needed some time to figure it out – 

“I'll go get my mum,” Piers told Harry. “It’s probably the flu, it was going around school last week before we got out.”

For a few quiet moments it was just Dudley and Harry, and Harry’s warm, steady hand clasping the back of his neck, and then Piers came back with Mrs. Polkiss who pressed a hand to his cheeks before shooing Harry and Piers away and pulling Dudley into the bathroom. 

“Tch, poor thing, I thought you looked a bit peaky, but then you're always so pale. Piers had it last week,” she chattered soothingly while measuring something peppermint scented out into a spoon. “Take this. You’ll be fine in no time,” she assured him, and then he was being escorted home with her hand on his shoulder and Harry’s fingers tangled in his own.

He managed to convince her to leave them at the walk. He had to, because he didn’t know how his mother would respond, and he couldn’t have Mrs. Polkiss seeing the state of the house, not if he wanted to keep things under control – because maybe if she saw how dark and empty it was then she’d get worried and feel the need to intervene, and if she intervened then maybe somebody would get it into their head that Harry should be taken away from the muggles and he wasn't sure how much power Dumbledore would have over something like that– 

It was only thanks to Harry’s grip on his elbow that Dudley made it upstairs and into their own bathroom, a mirror image of the Polkiss’s, before he was spewing the minty syrup straight back up again.

“Should we get some more medicine?” Harry was worrying at him, rubbing a hand between his shoulder blades. “Do you think we have any?” 

Dudley very much doubted that, but he just leaned back into Harry's hands and scrubbed at his eyes, gone watery with the way the mint was burning his throat. 

“I’m fine,” he murmured as Harry tugged him back to his room and pushed him into bed, crawling in after him and tugging the blankets up in spite of the summer heat. “I’m not sick. It’s just a headache,” he lied.

He rolled over to look at Harry, who was chewing at his bottom lip. 

“Your headaches are getting bad, Dudley,” Harry told him quietly. “I don’t like it.” He reached over and ran a finger along Dudley’s eyebrow, pushing hair back from his face.  Dudley’s eyes slid closed. “What if– what if something’s really wrong? Should you go to a doctor?”

“S’nothing. I’ll tell Madame Pomphrey when we go back, okay?” He felt the shifting of Harry nodding his head against the mattress, and let himself drift off. He was exhausted, the weight of his panic and sleepless nights dragging him down. He could let it go for today. He’d figure it all out tomorrow.

* * *

Dudley woke up in darkness, Harry still curled up beside him. There were comics scattered on the bed between them and a flashlight that Harry hadn't managed to turn off before falling asleep himself. Dudley clicked it off before levering himself over Harry, careful not to wake him. 

The rest of the house was dark and quiet, blissfully cool after the heat of the day. Dudley gulped down a glass of water at the kitchen sink, and then another before he managed to get the sticky-dry feeling out of his mouth. He let his eyes slide around the kitchen as he drank it. There wasn't much food in the house, but there were plenty of biscuits and some bread in the breadbox, and he thought there might’ve been some frozen food, as well. He stood and went into the cupboard, cataloguing, and eventually, to check what he’d been dreading. There was a tin on the top shelf that Petunia had always kept some money in, for groceries, something like an allowance from Vernon. He wasn’t certain if his father was still working, and he very much doubted that he was still at Grunnings, not with the way he’d come in stumbling drunk more than once over the past few weeks.

Dudley was careful to lift the kitchen chair instead of dragging it across the linoleum, and reached back to where he knew the tin was. It was light in his hands, but when he opened it there was a roll of bills tucked in. It wasn’t much, about the same as there usually was. He didn’t know what that meant, but somehow it made him feel a little more at ease. Maybe things weren't  _ good _ , exactly, but they were okay for now. 


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***VERY IMPORTANT NOTICE***
> 
> IF YOU NEED TO SEE THE FULL LIST OF WARNINGS, PLEASE MESSAGE ME AND I WILL LET YOU KNOW.
> 
> I personally don't believe in censorship or safe spaces. I believe that they impinge upon the rights of free speech, they shut down necessary discussions, and hiding from your problems has never been an effective solution. In writing, they can ruin a good plot. This is why I have utilized the handy-dandy "Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings" label on this story.
> 
> That being said, there are some pretty fucked up things that are going on, and I don't feel that I can honestly let people read this chapter onwards without knowing what they are getting into. 
> 
> In happier news, the lovely and inimitable Karrett has recently taken up as my beta! All the grammar and spelling mistakes are still mine, but Karrett has been helping me move the plot along much better, so hopefully updates wil be happing more quickly from now on!

Dudley spent the next week watching. Harry seemed content to drift from house to house, catching up with friends from primary and playing video games and eating far too much junk food and generally acting like an idiot. Like a normal child. Nobody seemed overly concerned about what might be going on over at the Dursley house – they’d hid things well enough for years now, and Harry didn’t quite seem to understand what was going on enough to be worried about it. Dudley was still around, and there was still enough food to eat, and Harry’s life generally went better the less time he spent around Vernon – as far as Harry was concerned, life was about as good as it ever was in their house.

Dudley folded the bills into the bottom of his trainer and counted the days until the money appeared again. It was within a week, and no one said anything about it any having gone missing or the food that had suddenly appeared in the house after Dudley used it to buy something to feed Harry that wasn’t tinned tomatoes or stale biscuits. He took more the next time, nearly half, and waited again – and on and on, week after week, waiting for someone to notice.

In those first few weeks, Dudley spent most of his time walking Harry to friend’s houses or the park or dragging him along to help carry groceries – “C’mon, we’re old enough now, don’t you want to get out of the house?” – and then carefully making sure they were home and in their rooms before six every night, which was the earliest his father ever came home. They spent the nights playing card games and reading and working on their school work.

Harry initially resented the confinement but relished having Dudley’s attention all for himself – he spent hours tucked up against Dudley’s side, pestering him for help on his essays and forcing him to build pillow forts and dragging him to lay in the space underneath the bed and read comics by flashlight. They played endless games of hangman and knots and crosses and chopsticks, never with any clear winner because they counted on there being a next time to win back the lead.

On the second Saturday Dudley went out and affected the wide-eyed look he'd mastered early on, one that had successfully shammed his teachers and other adults even when he'd been fat and horrible, and worked even better now that he was quiet and unfailingly polite and edging in on too-thin. (He'd had to cut a new notch in his belt. He'd never been thin before, not really, but he and Harry wore the same size and he’d been feeling sick since March and been able to count his ribs in the mirror since April and now he’d had to cut a new notch in his belt).

But he apparently sold the look well enough, because the neighbors pinched his cheeks and let him mow their lawns and weed their gardens and walk their dogs in return for pocket money and biscuits that he stuffed into his pockets when they looked away. They easily bought his stories about wanting to save money for a bike, a dog, a computer game, for the future because his father believed in teaching them the value of a dollar – that last always got him the laughing, indulgent look adults always seemed to give precocious children, repeating things their parents had told them, and sometimes a few extra quid – but they didn’t seem worried, didn’t ask any questions, and for Dudley that was enough.

Dudley spent one evening running some calculations – between skimming a bit off the top of the grocery tin each week and his odd jobs around the neighborhood, Dudley might manage to scrape together some money – not enough, not nearly enough, but maybe enough for their books if they bought them used and shared them (a trick he’d picked up in Uni), and maybe he could let the hems out on Harry’s trousers instead of buying new ones, and maybe he’d been eating too much, he’d gone longer before on nothing at all, back when he used to box, and his stomach always seemed to ache now anyways.

He could make it work.

* * *

 In July Dudley found work at a diner about two miles outside Little Whinging, in Egham.

He’d gone into town for the charity bins – people had more to throw out, and the church there had a larger, more generous congregation than the tiny chapel in Little Whinging that barely saw use outside of Easter and Christmas, and there was a school not far that had black trousers as part of the uniform. More than that, though, it was someplace to go, a way to occupy the hours between his father getting home at night and him leaving again in the morning. Harry seemed content, after those first few weeks, to be left alone in his room in the evening, but Dudley found himself lying awake for hours, staring at the ceiling and begging for something to occupy his time – anything to distract from his worries about money and the inside of his own mind staring back at him, the memory of Quirrell’s blood splashing hot across the backs of his fingers and the sound the man had made, wet and gurgling after that first initial _crunch_ of the cartilage in his throat giving way –

It didn’t take long for Dudley to figure out how to climb down the delicate trellis installed beneath his window.

He followed the trail of bus stops like bread crumbs, looping back a few times when they’d made a sudden turn or he’d gotten lost in a neighborhood. Within a week he could make the trip in less than forty minutes in the dark, if he cut across the meadows the lined Egham on the north side.

It only took a few more days after that to catch the eye of the cook at the all-night diner that he passed on his way to the clothing bins by the grocery store (where he’d yet to find a pair of pants that was within two sizes of Harry, but plenty of gently worn jeans and a pair of runners that would probably do for at least a year). He’d started dropping in to use the restroom and to drink out of the sink to help bear the muggy heat on his walk back to Little Whinging and to abate the ache in his gut that never seemed to go away lately.

One night the man gripped his shoulder and dragged him into the kitchen, shoved him at the pile of dishes and told him to occupy himself, and that was that.

He endured a lot of cooing and cheek-pinching from the older girls who work there, but the owner looked the other way and in between the leftovers he started bringing home for Harry and the cut of the tip money he’d been getting for washing the dishes, Dudley thought he might be making out better than some of the waitresses.

Dudley wasn’t quite sure what they thought of him – the older workers seemed ambivalent, the teenage girls fawning, the boys reluctantly tolerant. He’d heard a few whispers, like ‘gutter rat’ and ‘trouble,’ that after enough days of him showing up generally washed and on time began to fade more towards sympathetic wonderings of abuse and and neglect.

When they asked, he told them his name was Dean and that he was thirteen and that he lived in a block of flats a few streets north of the diner and there weren’t very many questions beyond that.

Dudley kept the money tied in a sock in the backpack he’d started carrying everywhere, not quite trusting anything he left at home to still be there when he got back. He spent an hour every night counting it out, running numbers, estimating how much they’d need. He thought back to the bundle of notes his mother had passed off to McGonagall last year, and realized his mother must have anticipated it, had had the money ready.

He thought about how much the wands and cauldrons and trunks had cost, how large the pile of coins McGonagall had received from the strange creatures had been, how much had been left over at the end. He wondered if they’d been fivers – if his mother had scraped and scrounged in secret, like he was doing – or if she’d gone to the bank and picked up a roll of crisp twenty pound notes. He couldn’t remember.

How many books would they need? Some were for more than one year, he knew, but how many? Would they need any special equipment now that they were older?

In the mornings Dudley watched Harry slip on his holey socks, inspected the grungies in the wash he’d started doing in the basement sink in order to keep quiet, and mentally added new underclothes to the list. He watched the food dwindle, wondered if his mother was eating at all – she barely left her room, and Dudley did his best to keep Harry and himself out of the house during the day and locked in their rooms after six.

Harry didn’t seem to notice him going in the night. He seemed a little worried, in that vague, uncertain way children were when they knew something was wrong but they weren’t really sure what, if anything, they were supposed to to about it. But he stayed out of Vernon’s way and ate the alternately soggy and burnt meals Dudley prepared them without complaint and happily gorged on the biscuits and puddings that Dudley was bringing home more reliably than money. He grew another inch and Dudley was proud and worried in turns – happy to see him grow, maybe even taller than he’d been last time, but watching the scant inch of bare ankle that had been showing beneath his robes at the end of last year growing in his mind’s eye.

Dudley began taking all of the money that showed up in the grocery tin. He wondered if it was his mother or his father replacing it, if they would notice, if it was just another thing to pile on top of the mountain of problems he was waiting to come back and bite him.

It stopped appearing a week into July, and he stops wondering at all.

* * *

In the second week of July, Dudley left the diner and to head back to Little Whinging sometime after midnight, only to get pulled down an alley by a strange little creature with bulbous eyes and features like melting wax.

“Young Master Potter cannot be reached by owl, _dirty half-blood_ ,” it told him, all in one breath, and pressed a note to his palm. “From Master Sirius, sir, kindly pass it along _you filthy little mudblood_ ,” the creature continues. Dudley stared.

“ _Take_ it!” the creature howled. Dudley’s fingers gripped the letter reflexively.

“I– thank you?” he says, uncertain. The creature’s scowl deepens, briefly, before it disappears with a loud _crack_.

Dudley looked down at the letter. _Harry Potter_ , was all it said, but the handwriting was a trained, elegant hand, and the parchment was thick and the fold crisp. He stowed it away carefully in the inner pocket of his bag, and spent the walk home wondering. Did the protection on the house prevent Harry from getting mail? He remembered, vaguely, that Harry didn’t always get letters. He’d made fun of him for it at some point, he was sure.

But there’d also been summers full of owls, when there was always at least one waiting on the sills or in the garden. Maybe it was only sometimes. Maybe the protections – _wards, that was what Flitwick had called those sorts of charms_ – could be adjusted. Maybe Harry wasn’t supposed to get mail from strangers, but friends could be keyed in somehow.

Dudley waited until the morning to pass along the letter to Harry – pretended he’d found it in the garden that morning, before Harry had woken up – and forced himself to eat a fried egg while he waited for Harry to finish reading it.

The eggs had gone cold, not that that seemed to stop Harry, but Dudley struggled to swallow it, dripping with grease and the whites still a little runny, even though it was hard and burnt around the edges. It felt unbearably slimy in his mouth and stuck in his throat briefly when he tried to swallow.

“So what does it say? Dudley asked when Harry finally lowered the letter.

“Sirius wants to host a birthday party for me,” Harry replied, looking pleased but conflicted. There were no birthday parties in the Dursley household. Petunia had attempted to organize some parties for Dudley and not for Harry when they were younger, but Dudley had put the kibosh on that quickly enough. No amount of whinging and wheedling would ever convince the Dursleys to throw a party for Harry, and Dudley wouldn’t have one without him. Dudley was certain that Harry wasn’t quite sure of what even went on at birthday celebrations.

“That’s nice,” Dudley told him. “Do you want to? You could see Ron and Hermione, and some of the others, if you like,” Dudley encouraged. Harry shrugged.

“What’s wrong with that?” Dudley asked, poking the last egg onto Harry’s plate, where it was quickly speared on a fork and eaten.

“He wants me to stay for a while afterwards.” Harry said to his plate as he mopped up the last of the yolk with his toast. “Two weeks,” he added around a mouthful.

“You should go,” Dudley said, swallowing hard. “It would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

This was Sirius’s role now – Dudley would keep Harry alive, Sirius could keep him happy. He could throw parties and buy presents and give Harry a place to spend Holidays where he could be well fed and spoiled and loved, as long as it didn’t become home. This house would be home, Dudley would be home. “Your friends could visit whenever you wanted, you could go to Diagon Alley, I bet he’d take you,” Dudley continued. “You might even get to fly.” He was sure that wizard homes had some sort of protection from muggle eyes – Malfoy had certainly boasted about flying at home enough.

It would be good for him, Dudley told himself firmly. Harry’s face had lightened as Dudley spoke. It was right. Harry should be with his own people.

“You could come too, you know,” Harry was saying brightly. “I’m sure he’d say yes!”

It was Dudley’s turn to frown down at his plate. The sulfurous smell wafting up at him turned his stomach and had him regretting the egg he’d eaten. He thought of the man he’d seen, the man he’d yelled at, of Harry at fifteen, sharp and angry and crying out for Sirius in his sleep, of the sock full of pocket change that could hardly be enough and the look in Quirrell’s eyes as he’d died, because they’d know, somehow, those people would see right to the heart of him in ten seconds and then he’d be taken away and Harry would have to stay here, alone with Vernon because Petunia was as good as dead already, never moving from her bed–

“No,” Dudley managed. “I think it would be good for you to spend some time with him, alone. Get to know each other. He could tell you about your parents, he might have some good stories.”

Harry’s face went hungry in the way it always did when he thought of his parents (because Dudley wasn’t enough, could never be enough).

“Go write a reply,” Dudley told him. “Give Hedwig a chance to stretch her wings.”

Harry was up and out of the kitchen before Dudley finished.

Dudley gathered up the dishes, filled the sink with hot water, and waited until he could no longer hear Harry on the stairs to go into the downstairs bathroom and be quietly, violently sick.

 _The egg must have been bad_ , Dudley told himself. _Just the one_.

* * *

 The next night Dudley was again assaulted by the little creature, Sirius’s reply in hand. Harry was ecstatic to receive it, and Dudley spent a few hours helping him organize his belongings, packing his trunk up with all his supplies in case he ended up staying the whole of August. He’d done it before, Dudley knew, disappearing off into the night with barely a word goodbye, not to be seen until the next summer. Harry drew himself a little calendar to hang on the wall, checking off the days until Sirius would come and pick them up for the party, wondering what sorts of presents he’d get, if Ron and Hermione could come, if that man – Remus – that he’d met at Christmas would be there.

Dudley stayed with him that night until he heard Vernon come in, making sure Harry stayed quiet until Vernon had lumbered off to bed, his snores reverberating through the walls. They were louder now, Dudley was certain, even though Vernon had lost weight in the past few months.

The diner was fairly busy that night, and Dudley ended up volunteering to drag the rubbish down to the dumpster they shared with a chinese restaurant down the street just so he could hear himself think.

There was a teenager, tall and gangly and spotty, smoking beside the dumpster. “Can’t dump that here, restaurant use only,” he told Dudley in a bored tone.

“It’s from the diner,” Dudley replied. It took some work to heave it over the side, but he managed it. His limbs felt shaky from the effort of hauling it down the street, but then again they always did lately.

“Titchy, aren’t you?” The other boy said. Dudley scowled at him, but still had to spend a moment panting as he leaned against the brickwork. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” he said when he finally caught his breath.

“On my break,” the boy replied, snagging another cigarette out of the pocket of his greasy apron and starting to chainsmoke. “‘sides, we close at midnight, not like you nutters.”

Dudley inhaled deeply, eyeing the carton with envy. He’d smoked for a year or so in Uni, before his coach had found out and taken it out of his hide, but he remembered the itch. The relief that came from scratching it. _Why are you hitting yourself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop!_

“Give me a fag?” Dudley asked tentatively. He’d smoked once or twice at this age, before, cigs bummed off older students, who gave them away just to have the privilege of introducing the firsties to their first smoke.

The older boy took a long draw and blew the smoke in Dudley’s face.

“Give me a blowie and maybe I’ll think about it,” he said, voice smug.

Dudley scowled, but something about the boy’s face gave him a funny feeling. The older boy was joking, but there was something too eager and a little wistful around the edges – he knew he could say it because Dudley’d never say yes, because it would just be taken as him telling some kid to bugger off, but he’d meant it.

“Gross,” Dudley said as an experiment, watching the nearly invisible disappointment flash across the boy’s face. He remembered being a teenager – fourteen and too fat by half for anyone to touch him, but laying awake listening to the other boys jack each other off in the dorms, just to feel another person’s touch. By the time he’d slimmed down, the rest of his yearmates had grown out of each other and into girls, but third and fourth year it hadn’t been strange. It was normal at this age – expected, even.

Dudley glanced at the boy again – about nineteen by the looks of it, too greasy and spotty for girls to want him, but the look in his eyes said he didn’t want them, either. Too old and too young for Dudley, all at the same time, but what did that matter to him? He’d done worse things, he’d _killed_ before, and if he could get something out of it–

“Throw in ten quid and the rest of that pack and maybe I’ll give you a handy,” Dudley said. He watched the surprise that flickered across the boy’s face, the eagerness, and shuddered off the slimy feeling that was creeping over him.

“Deal,” the boy said after a moment of shocked silence, lighting another fag and passing it over. Dudley took a long draw, careful not to choke, and relished the burn in his throat. “What’s your name?” The older boy said, watching Dudley closely, something approaching wonder on his face.

“Dean,” Dudley lied smoothly.

“Gary,” the boy replied, fascinated. He watched with sharp eyes as Dudley sucked down the cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs until the urge to cough had subsided. He finished it quickly and stamped out the snub on the pavement.

“When are you off, then?” Dudley asked Gary, his heart pounding. He felt cagey and panicky and for some reason he was relishing it.

“Half an hour,” Gary told him.

“See you back here then,” Dudley replied. He usually left around now anyways.

“See you then,” Gary agreed. Dudley wasn’t sure what that tone in his voice was, but he thought it might have been something like awe.

* * *

Dudley couldn’t remember how he got home. He remembered everything before – heading back to the diner, finishing the dishes, collecting the handfuls of small change left at the bottom of the tip jar that nobody else ever wanted to bother with (fifty pence and smaller were his to take). He remembered grabbing his bag from the corner next to the stove where he always left it, making sure the sockful of money was stowed properly in the pocket hidden on the underside of the bag.

He remembered heading back to the alley, finding Gary waiting for him, letting him lead Dudley further away from their respective workplaces – “For privacy,” Gary had said with a strange smile on his face – and everything that came after. Not wholly different from any other sexual encounter that he’d had, before, but it still felt –

Dudley shut off that thought, slinging his bag into the room ahead of him before hoisting himself off the trellis and over the window sill. Everything was moving in patches, little chunks of time missing: he was there, with Gary, the older boy gripping him by the hair and then . . .

And after, he was ducking across the street to avoid the middle aged couple tottering down the way, flush with wine after a party with friends, and then he was in his own back garden, and now, here, in his room.

He stripped out of his clothes, kicking them under the bed before retrieving the pyjamas that had sat mostly unused since the beginning of summer, most days ending with him passing out on the bed, still fully clothed. He couldn’t take a shower, not without risking waking everyone else up, which would just bring problems and questions and more. Instead he scrubbed himself with a flannel he wet at the sink before pulling on the nightclothes and crawling into bed.

Everything was fine. Nothing that hadn’t happened before – Dudley even had ten quid and half a box of cigarettes to show for his trouble. Gary had said he’d want to meet again, that he’d give Dudley more money. That maybe he had a friend that would be willing to help Dudley out as well.

It was fine.

 


End file.
